Preserving Australia's living archive
In with the old. Lots and lots of old.
The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) tells Australia’s national story by collecting, preserving and sharing audio-visual media and the cultural experience platforms of our time.
The NFSA collection already stands at more than 4 million items (111 unique media types) occupying a mind-boggling 24.5 petabytes. And it’s growing exponentially. Little wonder, the NFSA faces a major challenge in keeping up with this growth.
The NFSA partnered with us to help streamline its cataloguing and preservation processes. They needed help scoping requirements for a digital asset management (DAM) system to better support acquiring, managing, sharing, tracking and searching the NFSA’s vast collection of digital assets.
A robust solution based on extensive research
Our approach consisted of 3 phases: discovery, define and design.
Discovery
We immersed ourselves in the NFSA’s operations. We analysed the current products and services and how they connect, then overlayed current processes and workflows.
We took a highly collaborative approach. Across multiple workshops, we brainstormed with NFSA staff from several key business areas, and together generated over 1,000 Post-it notes on:
user journeys and service blueprints
team collaboration
success metrics and pain points.
To get an even greater understanding, we dived even deeper with one-on-one interviews, recording over 30 hours of conversations with key stakeholders.
Leveraging that knowledge, we mapped the NFSA’s current ecosystem: a visual display to show all the interconnected products and services that support the current processes and workflows.
This is often the first time that an organisation gets to see the entire ecosystem in all its glorious complexity.
It’s a key moment to visualise the sheer complexity of their digital environment.
Define
From the intelligence, data and feedback gathered in discovery, we created a series of higher-level knowledge assets including the pain points register and the key assessment criteria.
We consolidated the pain points by categories and by team. We then looked for common themes, describing the common issues, detailing the impacts on the NFSA, and highlighting the opportunities for improvements.
We grouped and prioritised the key assessment criteria to create a custom scorecard to support a DAM system market scan.
From the intelligence, data and feedback gathered in discovery, we created a series of higher-level knowledge assets including the pain points register and the key assessment criteria. We consolidated the pain points by categories and by team. We then looked for common themes, describing the common issues, detailing the impacts on the NFSA, and highlighting the opportunities for improvements.
We grouped and prioritised the key assessment criteria to create a custom scorecard to support a DAM system market scan.
Design
Using the assets, we mapped the future-state ecosystem. This is the idealised ecosystem that shows the interconnected products and workflows, to mitigate the identified pain points.
We conducted an initial DAM vendor market scan, scoring potential products against the key assessment criteria as a means of providing the NFSA an idea of what is available on the market that will potentially meet their complex requirements as well as guidelines for the NFSA to follow.
Our discovery and define activities enabled us to go beyond the DAMS recommendations. We also identified opportunities to:
improve the management of brand, marketing and media workflow
support the most underserved teams
streamline parts of the ecosystem not interacting with the DAM system
improve the experience of the NFSA’s customers.
Finally, we provided an implementation plan for the NFSA to follow in running the DAMS pilots and making an evidence-based decision on the final product.
A platform with minimal friction
Defining a future state of a platform that enables users to carry out tasks with minimal friction is a human vision.
Our collaborative research approach gave us great insight into the current NFSA ecosystem and the challenges experienced by its staff and customers.
Using this in-depth knowledge, and in collaboration with the NFSA, we defined the user experience requirements and evaluated these against a range of DAMs vendors that would best meet their needs.
describing the NFSA’s future state
identifying compatible DAM systems
recommending an implementation plan.
Although the NFSA operates in a highly technical environment, it views itself on a much more human level.
“We believe in the power of audio-visual media to recover and preserve memory, to provoke thought and discussion around complex and challenging issues, and to promote understanding and fellow feeling amongst contemporary Australians.”
In the digital age, we’re proud to be helping the NFSA become Australia’s most dynamic and valued cultural organisation .