Fiona McCartney
Fiona McCartney is a researcher with the Queensland Department of Environment, Science and Innovation’s Social and Economic Science team. The majority of her work relates to understanding the motivations and barriers behind peoples’ actions, to inform the behaviour change required to achieve policy objectives in a range of environmental, natural resource management (NRM) and agricultural contexts. Examples of recent policy objectives include: understanding farm use decision making and the adoption of best practices in agriculture; exploring the factors influencing drought preparedness in grazing enterprises; increasing farmer participation in NRM incentive schemes; complying with environmental regulations; enhancing decision support tools to increase user adoption; and improving evidence-based policy making.
Session
Effectively communicating complex or nuanced subjects as diverse as ‘probabilistic uncertainty’ and ‘cultural capital’, is an ongoing challenge for researchers, policy makers and practitioners within the Queensland Drought and Climate Adaptation Program (DCAP).
In DCAP, historical climate records and seasonal outlooks are increasingly important sources of information for agriculture and natural resource management decision making. To improve the use of this data, primary producers and land managers need to be able to understand and accurately interpret the statistical measures commonly used to present probabilistic climate data, such as percentiles and terciles. Unfortunately, these measures are frequently misinterpreted.
Coinciding with these misinterpretations, related social research had identified several cultural constraints to drought preparedness within Queensland’s extensive grazing and livestock production industry.
Employing a user-centred design (UCD) framework, that makes grazing land managers’ priorities and experiences the centre of focus, animation was combined with character driven storytelling, that communicate scientific and management decision making information. Thus, three short videos in a series were produced; the specific objectives of these animations were to:
• demonstrate how to calculate and interpret rainfall percentiles for a grazing enterprise (“Understanding percentiles in climate data: This season might not be as great as you think it is, Jim”);
• calculate and interpret rainfall and pasture terciles for a grazing enterprise (“Terciles for Climate and Pasture Growth – more than just a median value”); and
• enhance the cultural capital of drought preparedness and resilience (“From a big wet to a dry spell – Jim’s property auction experience”).
The team invested considerable effort in engaging likely users to review and collect feedback on the animation, at various stages in the process (e.g. concept, storyboard, animatic and animation), to ensure it would connect contextually and with its intended viewers. This included using relevant language and phrases, ensuring the landscape, animals and even clothing were appropriate, and adding the character of ‘Rusty’, a farm-style dog, to provide comic relief. It was a careful balance to make sure the animation engaged viewers, but the messages remained technically accurate, and evidence based.
Similarly, several established concepts from behavioural and social science were deliberately but subtly incorporated into the animations, such as using relatable ongoing characters; simple language; a story format; a salient context; a positive frame; credible messengers; social norms; attractive and easy visuals; written and verbal script; humour (affect); and linking the message to known livestock producer values, motivations and aspirations.
Employing a combination of UCD, animation and storytelling with behavioural insights has proven to be an effective and entertaining way to communicate diverse complex and nuanced subjects.