WORLD OF EXCUSES

TitleWORLD OF EXCUSES
BrandUNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
Product / ServiceUNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
CategoryB05. Websites / Microsites
EntrantWUNDERMAN THOMPSON Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
Production WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Melbourne, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
João Braga Wunderman Thompson Australia Chief Creative Officer
Martin Beecroft Wunderman Thompson Australia Chief Technology & Innovation Officer
Jack Elliott Wunderman Thompson Australia Associate Creative Director
Lochie Newham Wunderman Thompson Australia Associate Creative Director
Paulina Embart Wunderman Thompson Australia Project Lead/Australian Operations Director
Travis Weerts Wunderman Thompson Australia UX/UI Director
Marcus Collier Wunderman Thompson Australia Technical Director
Isabelle Hooper Wunderman Thompson Australia UX Design
Chris Hyland Wunderman Thompson Australia UI Design
Brie Stewart Wunderman Thompson Australia Creative Director, Content
Annie House Wunderman Thompson Australia Social Strategist
Rhys Delios Callanan Wunderman Thompson Australia Content Creator
James Ayling Wunderman Thompson Australia Senior Designer

Describe the creative idea

Across the world, we all have excuses for why we aren’t doing more to stop climate change. These excuses are the biggest threat to humanity. Like asteroids, they could destroy our only home. To propel people from apathy to action, we created World of Excuses, an interactive online experience that visualised the world’s most common excuses as asteroids hurtling towards Earth. Each user’s excuse was destroyed with plain and simple facts, before they were given a tool to help them continue the conversation about climate action. These tools included an Instagram filter that forced people to face the alarming facts of climate change, a Chrome Plugin called Thesaurus Rex - designed to uncomplicate the science of extinction by translating tricky terms, and a flip on ‘The Birds and The Bees’ with a book that helps kids give their parents ‘the talk’ about why we need to phase out fossil fuels.

Describe the execution

Climate change can be complicated for many to understand, accordingly, the World of Excuses user experience was designed to make this information as easy to digest as possible. Several design elements were used to make the website feel less like reading a white paper from a climate scientist. Hand-written call-outs, underlines and shapes made information feel more accessible but also highlighted the most important facts. Photo-real asteroids helped make the experience feel for immediate and daunting, with Earth always the target of each. To make this element of the experience feel more real for users, the Earth rotation was matched to the time in their location – so if it was dark, they saw their town or city in darkness. Since there’s no single silver bullet argument that appeals to our 7 billion strong audience, users were first able to select the excuse that resonated them, from “We’re already doing enough to stop climate change” to “We need fossil fuels for our economy” and every opinion in-between. From here, users were then prompted to ‘end this excuse’ where they were served on short rebuttal with the simple facts that quash their excuse. If users wanted to delve more into further information, they could then scroll deeper to reveal statistical evidence, a longer-form rebuttal and a tool to help them further understand the science or spread the word to others.

Links

Website URL