ABC Discuss

The Brief

A broadcaster with extraordinary reach — and no place for its audience to connect.

ABC operates across TV, radio, podcast, and streaming, touching millions of Australians every day. But once the broadcast ended, the conversation stopped. There was no space where listeners, viewers, and readers could find each other, discuss what they'd just experienced, or connect around the niche interests that ABC's content already served.

As part of ABC's push to become a digital-first platform by 2028, they issued a set of research briefs exploring new directions for digital engagement. We took on "Fostering Local Community Engagement" — designing a digital space that could cultivate local communities and subcultures, without relying on heavy moderation or editorial overhead to keep it alive.

The brief wasn't about building a new platform — it was about finding the missing layer in a broadcaster that already reached millions.

What Research Revealed

Every major platform is built for the 10% who create content. The other 90% are an afterthought.

We studied the landscape — from Reddit and Discord to smaller regional platforms like Kompasiana and Bilibili. One pattern was consistent: large platforms optimise for content creators because creators drive ad revenue. The majority audience — the passive consumers, the people who read threads and never reply — are structurally underserved.

Ten semi-structured interviews and a survey of 70 users confirmed it. People trust credentialled opinions from strangers. They crave content aligned with niche interests. But they feel unseen by algorithms that reward volume over relevance. The design opportunity wasn't to build another creator platform. It was to design for the people who never post.

Platforms optimise for creators because creators drive revenue. The 90% who consume and never post are structurally underserved.

Persona 1

The Lurker

"I just want to read and learn — I don't want to feel judged for having the wrong opinion."

Sakri · 28 · Introvert · Recently relocated to Australia

Goals

• Connect with like-minded individuals in a low-pressure space
• Gain in-depth knowledge about hobbies and local life
• Join community events without the anxiety of cold introductions

Barriers

• Socially anxious — fears being judged for opinions
• Can't tell if information online is reliable or accurate
• Limited social circle; feels alienated in a new city

Persona 2

The Poster

"If I'm posting about the Matildas, I want it to be accurate and reach people who actually care."

Mik · 22 · Extrovert · Media Communications student, active creator

Goals

• Build a reputation as a trusted voice in women's football
• Create accurate content and quickly reach an engaged audience
• Find genuine community rather than follower metrics

Barriers

• Social pressure to stay current; feels constant urgency
• No reliable way to verify accuracy before posting
• Spam and privacy concerns undermine trust in platforms

The Strategic Reframe

A standalone app would have failed.

Our early concept was an independent community platform — a new destination for ABC audiences to discover and join. Testing exposed the flaw almost immediately: community platforms live or die by critical mass, and we had none to start with. Asking someone to seek out a brand-new app, create an account, and find a community cold is a high bar. We were asking for too much from people who'd never heard of us.

The answer was already in the brief. ABC's ecosystem reaches Australians throughout their day — morning news, lunchtime radio, afternoon podcast, evening iView. The insight was that ABC Discuss shouldn't compete for attention. It should embed itself at the moments when that attention already existed.

So we reframed the product: from standalone destination to distributed layer. Wherever ABC content lived — a news article, a Triple J track, an iView programme — a conversation could start. The platform inherited ABC's trust rather than having to earn its own.

ABC Discuss shouldn't compete for attention. It should embed itself at the moments when that attention already existed.

How We Got There

From blank page to tested prototype in ten weeks.

Reflection

The most important decisions weren't about features.

The hardest work wasn't ideation — it was constraint. Ten weeks, four people, competing stakeholder perspectives, and an ABC brief that was genuinely open-ended. The challenge was knowing what not to build, and holding that position under pressure.

My own instinct throughout was to push further into the space between online and offline. I wanted ABC Discuss to strengthen communities that existed beyond screens — local events, neighbourhood groups, cultural gatherings that ABC was already covering but not connecting people around. That thread didn't make it into the MVP, and looking back, the scope decision was right. But it's still the question I find most interesting: how do digital platforms serve, rather than substitute, the communities that exist in the real world?

The most critical design work happens before a single screen is drawn — in how you frame the problem, align stakeholders, and define what success actually means.

Working with ABC taught me that the most critical design work happens before a single screen is drawn — in how you frame the problem, align stakeholders, and define what success actually means. Get that wrong and no amount of good interaction design will fix it.