Climate Exchange

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A user-centred design approach

to the Seasonal Climate Outlook

Elizabeth Boulton, Andrew Watkins and David Perry, Climate Information Services, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

he Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Seasonal Climate

Outlook (SCO) product provides a forecast for the likely

shifts in temperature and rainfall for the coming three

months and is released on a monthly basis. Information is

presented in probabilistic terms; reflecting the probability or

likelihood that rainfall or temperature will be above the long-

term median.

The website includes an ancillary product – the El Nino Southern

Oscillation (ENSO) Wrap-Up, also known as the El Niño / La Niña

Status Update.

The ENSO Wrap-Up provides detail on key indica-

tors such as cloudiness, trade winds, sea surface temperature, and

the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). Indirectly related to ENSO,

and important for predicting the Australian climate, information

on the Indian Ocean Dipole and the results of a range of inter-

national climate models is also provided. All of this information

is distilled into a short written description on the status of key

climate drivers and their prediction.

Both the SCO and the ENSO Wrap-Up are popular with the

Australian community, industry and Government. Many of Australia’s

economically important industries, such as tourism and agriculture,

are crucially dependent on seasonal forecasting.

Each month (for the

SCO) and fortnight (for the ENSO Wrap-Up), an e-mail with a link

to the updated website is distributed to a wide range of

stakeholders, including media outlets, Ministers, many

Federal, State and local government agencies and a range

of stakeholders in sectors such as finance, emergency

services and aviation. Advance warning of likely rainfall

and temperature facilitates risk management decisions

on planting activity, fertilization, irrigation regimes and

dam management, and supports forward planning in the

emergency services, insurance and tourism sectors.

Seasonal Climate Outlook Review Project

The Bureau’s National Climate Centre (NCC) had

received anecdotal evidence suggesting that users found

the SCO product difficult to understand. A review of

international efforts to convey seasonal forecasts

found

that other agencies presented information in a similar

way and thus were likely to face the same communi-

cation issues as Australia. At the same time, the NCC

was undertaking stakeholder engagement training

and revising its stakeholder engagement plans. All of

these deliberations led to a decision to launch the SCO

Review Project in October 2010.

The multidisciplinary project team, led by a generalist

Project Manager, included scientists from the Bureau of

Meteorology’s Climate Prediction subsection, communi-

cations experts from the Communication and Adoption

Team (CAT) and a marketing advisor from the Bureau’s

Public Relations section. It also utilized the services of

two specialist consultants: a marketing company and

a user-centred design (UCD) company. The aim of the

project was to investigate users’ experience with the SCO

and determine how it could be improved.

An iterative process

The project was conducted over 11 months between

September 2010 and July 2011. It involved five stages of

market research, with the user-centred design activity

occurring in an iterative fashion, in response to infor-

mation gained at each stage of the market research. This

allowed for the proposed SCO designs to move from

broad concepts to more detailed designs.

Stage 1: Interviews with 10 internal Bureau experts

The aim here was to mine existing internal knowledge

so that the marketing research agency staff could be as

informed as possible before they approached external users.

ommunities

Chance of exceeding the median rainfall June to August 2012

Source: National Climate Centre