COP28 - The United Nations
Creating an integrated digital experience for the planet’s most important event.
Over ten days, 500,000 people descended on Dubai’s Expo City. Everyone, from world leaders to schoolchildren, were there to play their part in delivering a future environmental legacy for generations to come. I led the UI design and user experience teams; creating the official apps, products and digital tools to support the event.
Creative/Experience Director – IDENTITY
App | Platform | Design System | Strategy
Background
COP28 UAE was an event on a truly global scale, more than double the size of any of its predecessors. We started just six months before the opening day with a mammoth task ahead – not only did we need to get to grips with the intricacies of an event this complex, but we also needed to define, design, build and launch multiple digital products for an immovable deadline, with many moving parts.
Audience
We looked at the role of digital as part of the bigger CX picture, identifying the channels and platforms users would need from pre-research, to travel, then during and post the event.
We had two key audience types. ‘Blue Zone’ guests were the UN-accredited deal-makers and their entourage. They needed a highly secure platform and tools to help them negotiate, research and network on-site.
The other 400,000 were members of the public, from all walks of life and every corner of the planet. They were there to discover COP and the UAE, navigate the vast site and get a window into the key happenings within the Blue Zone.
Onsite wayfinding
With over 2,000 meetings happening each day, scattered amongst the 100’s of meeting rooms on site, navigation was key. Due to the intricacies of the site layout, we needed to develop a custom mapping tool; layering publicly available information over higher-security delegate-only site information. We also developed an AI-powered chatbot called ‘COP GPT’ to provide real-time guidance and support.
Scheduling and networking
For Blue Zone delegates, we developed a secure, logged-in version of the app to help plan their busy schedules. We also developed networking functionality to search for other delegates with similar topics of interest, arrange meetings and connect.
Results
Over the ten day event, the app was downloaded 57k times, with over 3m page views and a five star app-store rating. More than 115k Blue Zone guests registered using our online portal and the UN plan to continue using our app for all future COP events.