Services
Partners
Te Taura Whiri i te reo Māori | Māori Language Commission
Te Hiringa | Language Planning team
Impact area
Indigenous and Racial Rights
Services
Website development
UX and UI design
Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori | The Māori Language Commission was established under the Māori Language Act 1987 to promote the use of Māori as a living language and as an ordinary means of communication.
Across government agencies, there is a large and increasing appetite for learning te reo and understanding tikanga. Language planning helps organisations build capability in te reo Māori, enabling them to strategically set and work towards goals that contribute to normalising and revitalising te reo Māori in Aotearoa.
As the key government agency responsible for guiding organisations through their language planning process, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori found they needed to digitise their services in order to keep up with growing demand.
From the start, we worked closely with Te Hiringa team and existing service users to first understand the mahere reo (language planning) service and then build a solution together that encapsulates their shared vision.
User research and collaborative design
We facilitated a series of one-on-one interviews and workshops with Te Hiringa team members to combine knowledge and map the existing service. We then talked to external Language Planning experts across the government sector to understand their experiences interacting with the existing offline service.
To get a clear view of the end-to-end service, we built personas, journeys and service maps to understand and help us refine users' experiences and then translate them into digital ones. We spent time drilling down into users' needs, teasing out how we might carry across the best aspects of the existing real-world service, while building a supportive, empowering digital experience.
Te Pae Mahere: A customisable online language planning tool
Te Pae Mahere is a self-service online language planning tool that enables kaimahi tasked with creating mahere reo for their organisation to build a customised plan prototype at their own pace. The tool steps users through language planning activities appropriate to the language competency level of their organisation. Users are guided through the creation of language goals, actions and indicators and are provided with a final plan and supporting resources.
On completion of a plan prototype in the tool, a language planning support person at Te Taura Whiri is alerted and makes contact with the user to provide feedback and support to finalise the plan. Users are able to download a copy of the language plan and can also store plans in the tool for future use.
As well as helping the Te Hiringa team to keep up with the demand for language planning support, the tool has helped Te Taura Whiri with reporting by capturing the levels organisations are at and the pace at which they move through their language journeys.