Services
Partners
Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori
Māori Language Commission
Impact area
Indigenous and racial rights
Our services
UX and UI design
NationBuilder development

Historically, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week) was primarily an offline campaign, culminating in Te Wa Tuku Reo, a large-scale parade in Pōneke Wellington. However, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic required Te Taura Whiri i te reo Māori, the Commission responsible for Te Wiki to make a rapid shift to a fully digital experience.
Without an existing dedicated website, the challenge was twofold:
1. Immediate response – A campaign site had to be designed, built, and launched within just three weeks to accommodate Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori’s online transformation.
2. Long-term vision – Beyond Te Wiki 2020, Te Taura Whiri, sought to extend the initiative’s reach year-round. The goal was to create a sustainable digital hub for Māori language learning that:
- Engaged communities and fostered an active user base.
- Provided structured learning journeys with personalised experiences.
- Tracked engagement and user progress to inform future strategies.
As a government agency, Te Taura Whiri also needed robust analytics to understand audience engagement, monitor learning trends, and optimise the platform’s effectiveness over time.
Strategic Partnership & Discovery
For Purpose and Te Taura Whiri embarked on a four-year collaboration to build a platform that not only facilitated language learning but also showcased a living, growing movement.
We undertook a discovery phase, conducting:
- Interviews with users across different audience segments (educators, community groups, businesses, and individuals).
- A survey reaching 157 organisations and 1,711 individuals to assess user needs and expectations.
We then built reports yearly after Te Wiki, measuring the impact of the campaign and website. This created the basis for the following year's design and technical iteration.
From this research, we developed user personas and audience segmentation, custom learning pathways tailored to different levels of Māori language proficiency. From there we developed data-informed recommendations for UX design, functionality, and content strategy.
User-Centered Design & Development
Recognising the diverse needs of schools, sports groups, businesses, and individuals, we developed a customised website with the following key features:
1. Community-Generated Campaign Walls
- Designed to foster pride and participation around speaking te reo.
- Allowed users to upload and share video, text, or photo content around learning themes
- Incorporated like and comment features to enable peer interaction and taukoko
- Built an automated moderation tool, enabling Te Taura Whiri staff to manage content easily before publishing.
2. Personalised Learning Journeys
- Implemented dynamic content delivery, adjusting learning challenges based on user activity and language proficiency.
- Developed custom automated email sequences, ensuring personalised follow-ups to encourage continued engagement.
- Introduced a custom sidebar panel, displaying the website users groups, and relevant challenges for user centred navigation and to enhance the experience.
3. Social & Community Engagement
- Enabled users to create personal profiles, aggregating their progress, pledges, and submitted content.
- Allowed organisations (schools, businesses, and community groups) to establish collective pages, showcasing their members’ contributions.
- Designed an interactive leaderboard, leveraging gamification techniques to encourage participation through a recruitment challenge. Users received unique sign-up codes, enabling real-time tracking of new recruits and public recognition of top contributors.

Awards & Recognition
The success of the Reo Māori website was recognised internationally, winning:
Best International Website – Reed Awards (USA, 2021)
Best Website – NGOs – Polaris Awards (Europe, 2021)
Historic Engagement & Growth
In 2021, we helped the Commission make history. Over 1 million people participated in Te Wā Tuku Reo, hosted on the Reo Māori website on September 14, with the website collecting 40,000 sign-ups. These registrations translated into 1,058,669 participants, including large workplace groups, iwi (tribes), organizations, and schools.
These results aligned with the Commission’s broader strategy:
- The 40,000 registrations provided a foundation for ongoing communication and learning, enabling sustained engagement beyond Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori.
- The campaign’s digital presence significantly contributed to shifting national attitudes toward te reo Māori. A Colmar Brunton poll found that 8 out of 10 people now recognised te reo Māori as part of their national identity—a significant increase linked to the campaign’s success in normalising and promoting the language.
A Lasting Legacy
The impact of the campaign was so significant that it was recognised and archived at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum. The website and campaign provided an interactive and immersive space for people to engage with Māori language and culture, reinforcing a sense of connection and celebration that continues to grow.
The Reo Māori website has proven to be more than just a digital campaign tool—it is a living, evolving hub for te reo Māori learners, fostering long-term participation and community building.