Web of Life Quest: A board game in nature.

The Design to Deliver programme was collaboratively created by Digital Catapult, Connected Places Catapult, and Satellite Applications Catapult; three connected organisations that seek to accelerate innovation within their respective fields.

Its goal? To unite UK-based SMEs with design consultancies and local community partners to create innovative, user-centred solutions to some of the UK’s biggest challenges.

We worked specifically with Digital Catapult, and their challenge was: Informed choices for nature-positive actions - How can you develop a solution leveraging existing data, to help citizens be better informed to make nature-conscious decisions?

Hive IT was chosen to partner with Reading-based SME Nature Nurture, a creative SME, on the development of an operational prototype of their immersive nature experience. Their project was called ‘Web of Life Quest’. Our work was to guide Nature Nurture through a human-centred design process to develop the Web of Life Quest from a concept to a user-tested digital and physical experience that encourages nature-positive behaviour.

We initially met with Digital Catapult in late 2024 to introduce ourselves and gain deeper insight into the format of the challenge. Here, we got to know the team that we would be working with on this project, and how we would all contribute to the project’s success. On the team were:

• Digital Catapult - a London-based deep technology innovation organisation that wants to utilise the unique ideas and talents of Small / Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to tackle some of the UK's biggest challenges. Their role was to give us guidance and assistance, connect us with experts in design and technology, and monitor everyone's progress throughout the process.
• Hive IT (Design Consultancy) - our role was to provide design expertise and to help two Small / Medium Enterprises (SME, providing user research, design approach, user testing and digital implementation.

Knowle West Media Centre (Location Partner) - KWMC is an arts and technology centre and charity located in Knowle West, Bristol. It uses the arts and technology to help support people in making positive changes in their lives and communities. They provided local user group contacts and supported research activity.

Shortly after meeting everyone, we got the opportunity to learn more about the SME’s that got shortlisted for the programme and ask questions / provide feedback that would help Digital Catapult in choosing the SME’s and allocating them to the appropriate design consultancies. The two SME’s that were chosen to work with us were:

• Mechanimal - A Bristol-based SME that creates live theatre shows and immersive experiences that explores life on a changing planet, and finds new ways of touring shows inspired by how nature moves.

• Nature Nurture - a creative social enterprise rooted in nature and wellbeing, whose mission is to enhance the mental and physical wellbeing of our diverse communities by engaging and connecting them with the parks, woodlands and waterways on their doorstep.

This case study is about the work we did with Nature Nurture and their project, the Web of Life Quest.

The Web of Life Quest is an immersive and dynamic sonic quest, guiding people through the Web of Life using physical waymarkers, featuring plant and animal characters inspired by the local ecology in a gamified context.

The aim of the game is to create an ecosystem healthy enough to attract and keep the apex predator within the respective food web, by answering multiple-choice questions for each species and getting more or less ‘eco health points’ depending on the choice you make.

Our job was to take Nature Nurture from its initial conception phase through the design thinking process to end up with a working prototype that was validated by and tailored to user needs.

This was always about designing with people, not just for them. That started on day one with a collaborative kick-off in London arranged by Digital Catapult, followed by three agile sprints across research, prototyping and testing.

It was a brilliant chance to meet not only the SME’s we would be working with, but also the other design consultancies and location partners, as well as the team from the various Catapults.

After presentations and a Q&A on the programme, everyone split out into their respective teams to get to know each other a little better. We had prepared a workshop for our team to get a head start on the design thinking process for Nature Nurture’s idea.

In the week following the kick-off off we worked as a team to create our project plan, which was the first output required by Digital Catapult. This plan laid out the activities we planned to do during each of our 3-week sprints, the outputs we hoped to achieve, and the risks and dependencies associated.

Although we knew that the nature of the design thinking process meant that our plan would have to be flexible, it was useful to have this document as our reference point and guide.

Involving the local community was at the heart of this project and key to the success of the prototype, so it was really important for this to be a consistent focus throughout the whole process.

Using Knowle West Media Centre’s already cemented relationships with the community, we were able to create an engagement plan with various local groups, including:

• The Health Park’s walking group
• The ‘We are More’ (part of KWMC) after-school parent and child allotment group
• ‘Creative hub’, a creative youth group based at KWMC
• SoundWaves and SoundWaves+, youth music groups based at KWMC
• The ‘Eco warrior’ group at the local Oasis Connaught Junior school

It was important for us to approach the engagement sensitively; many of these groups had false promises from other external organisations about new and exciting projects and were therefore understandably mistrustful. Luckily, Nature Nurture had lots of experience in building trusting relationships with other communities from their previous work, so all engagements were successful and incredibly helpful in informing the project.

Each iteration of the Web of Life game was informed and tested by the groups we were engaging with; after each community group session, the core project team would get together to consolidate and analyse all of the feedback received.

We also engaged with some individuals based at Knowle West, including a local tree expert and a member of the Digital Projects and IT team. Lewis, from the digital projects team, was able to give us some helpful insight into the digital literacy and habits of the area, such as people being wary of needing to input their details into a platform, and the fact that whilst most people have their own mobile device, many don’t own their own desktop device. This was invaluable when it came to us making decisions on the digital direction of the project.

We knew from the beginning that for the ‘Web of Life Quest’ to be successful, it would need to be not only entertaining and informative, but also a compelling and enjoyable game that was interesting but not over-complicated; striking a balance was going to be tricky!

Part of the programme offering from Digital Catapult was time with some of their experts across various fields. We were lucky enough to work with Aki Jarvinen, one of Digital Catapult's lead technologists and a gameplay expert! Aki led us through the basics of creating our game player loop for the Web of Life Quest, considering rules, resources, stimuli and feedback.

By referring back to this loop after each user engagement session, we were able to analyse the feedback, iterate on the gameplay and test the results on an almost daily basis.

For this trial, we had decided to focus primarily on creating a human prototype for the game, due to time and budget constraints, but we had all agreed that a nice stretch goal would be to develop a digital game in its basic form. This proved to be one of the biggest challenges of the project: creating a game that would work in this hybrid way.

As with everything in this project, all of the designs were a collaborative effort between Hive, Nature Nurture, and various other partners and connections. Hive created a prototype interface to support the gameplay using the beautiful species images created by Anne Wilson, a Reading-based artist and friend of Nature Nurture, integrating the soundscapes created by Richard from A Noisy Silence.

We knew that we’d be limited when it came to the digital offering for this game due to the time and budget constraints of the programme, but we agreed that we wanted to design, develop and test a proof of concept to show that a technical solution was feasible and usable, using a subset of the gameplay and sound recordings.

So for this workstream, we investigated the technology available to the audience, their access to mobile data and the connectivity available in the potential trail locations.

We decided to build a Progressive Web App (PWA); a type of web application that delivers a native app experience, using web technologies. Users can add them to their home screen, like native apps, but without having to go through an app store or download process. They can cache data, allowing offline access (key to the remote locations that might house the Web of Life Quest), are fast and responsive, have cross-browser compatibility and are easily searchable on the web.

One of the primary goals of the Web of Life Quest is to educate people about various species of plants and animals in their local area. By doing so, participants can better understand their roles within the ecosystem and recognise how their decisions impact the environment as a whole.

Therefore, a deeper understanding of the local ecology was vital to the project, as it’s a huge part of what the platform communicates to its users.

Led by Teresa, an ecologist and partner of Nature Nurture. Teresa taught us about ecology and biodiversity, which meant the whole team had a much better understanding of what we were creating. She spent time researching the biodiversity of the Northern Slopes, carrying out an ecological site survey. She spoke with local conservation groups, worked with Bristol City Council to get species data and provided us with the final list of species to use for the Web of Life Quest.

The ecology work informed another important aspect of the project: species sound mapping and recordings. Led by Richard from A Noisy Silence, who is another partner of Nature Nurture.

A Noisy Silence uses “sound and listening as a vehicle for supporting wellbeing, building community and caring for our environment”. Richard and his team captured species-specific recordings and worked with local youth groups at Knowle West Media Centre to build immersive soundscapes. From buzzing bees to flapping wings, sound became a key part of the user journey.

Knowle West Media Centre hosted a wonderful end-of-project showcase at the end of the 3 sprints, so that the cohort could all come back together to show our work, share our stories and experiences of the programme, and celebrate the end of an intense and successful journey!

Each team presented their work; Nature Nurture had a brilliant video produced to show the journey we’d been on with the Web of Life Quest, and it was very well received by the other teams.

We all then walked together to the Northern Slopes ‘Springfield Allotment’ where we were able to set up the Web of Life Quest and invite the other teams to play the game, using the PWA on our phones, playing the audio through a speaker, and following the physical posts around the allotment. We got some really helpful feedback from our final chance at a user feedback session; people felt the questions and choices presented were at the right level, they enjoyed learning about our impact on the various species, and thought that it was well-suited for the 8-14 age group we were aiming for.

• A co-designed working game prototype tested by real users
• A sound-rich, physical trail with digital interactions
• Positive feedback from diverse community testers
• A successful and well-attended ‘Wild Day’ on location at Knowle West, to showcase the game
• A basic PWA (progressive web app) version of the game
• Lots of lovely new friends and partners who’ve taught us so much about ecology, community and how to strive for a better connection with nature

At Hive IT, we believe in digital for social good. Projects like this let us flex our design skills while working towards something much bigger. For example, stronger communities, deeper nature connection and inclusive access to technology.

We truly loved so many things about this project, from learning new things about ecology and how species interconnect, working so closely with a wonderful and diverse group of people with so many different skill sets and having the opportunity to step away from our computers and get into nature.

By working together in partnership, staying humble and listening closely, we helped turn a brilliant idea into something real. And we had a lot of fun doing it.

It was such a worthwhile cause knowing that the work that Nature Nurture does can have a significant impact on our green spaces and the health and well-being of children around the country.

Whether it's making data more accessible, creating tools for better decision making, or helping innovative teams share their work with the world. We can help you turn complex challenges into clear, human digital solutions.

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