Presentation at Brobygrafiska Students: Exploring Värmland’s Cultural Crafts
As part of the CULTURALITY project’s mission to promote cultural heritage through digital innovation, students at Brobygrafiska have collaborated with Region Värmland to design a prototype for a story-driven digital platform. Focused on showcasing local artisans and craftsmen, the project blends branding, storytelling, and UX design to explore how digital tools can support rural cultural tourism.
Digital story-driven platform is created in collaboration with Brobygrafiska
During seven intensive weeks, about twenty students who study Digital Design at Brobygrafiska have worked on an assignment prepared together with Region Värmland. It is about developing a prototype for an interactive digital story-driven platform that lifts artisans and craftsmen in Värmland. Film developer Stefan Barkman tells how it happened. “Part of the Culturality project is about digital resources for research, outreach and collaboration. After collecting materials and some testing, we realized the need to involve UX design in the process. We contacted the Digital design teacher at Brobygrafiska who understood our entrance and we began a fruitful collaboration.”
Assignment to students
Jonathan Rist Christensen, teacher in Digital Design at Brobygrafiska explains how they took on the assignment. “The students were given an open brief about creating a digital platform to promote Värmland’s cultural crafts, with tourists as the target group. The focus was on finding a solution that would benefit and be used by the target group, depending on the concept they came up with. The project began with research to understand the target group and their origins. With the help of reports and statistics from Visit Värmland, they were able to identify different target groups based on their concepts. Then followed an iterative process to develop the solution, with many hours of hand-drawn wire sketches that were then transformed in Figma into a clickable prototype. In addition to this, students also had to create a brand to connect with the storytelling and communicate with the target audience in the right way.”
Many creative ideas
On April 8th, Stefan Barkman and Kajsa Stinnerbom, Region Värmland, together with representatives from Visit Värmland and Compare, were on site in Sunne to take part in the results of six groups’ creation of different creative platforms. “Great work from the students, it was very interesting to take part in all the groups’ presentations. It came with many exciting angles and solutions. We gained insight into how digital design for interactive platforms works and what opportunities they bring, as well as the importance of the aesthetic work behind such a product,” says Stefan Barkman.
Develop a digital platform and storytelling
Jonathan Rist Christensen further develops the reasoning how branding and storytelling are connected. “For us at Brobygrafiska, branding and storytelling go hand in hand. If you don’t know how to tell something, there may not be much to tell. When the brand has a clear core of values, storytelling becomes much easier as it becomes an extension of the brand as a personality.”
Jonathan emphasizes what is important when developing a digital platform. “A digital platform needs to be accessible, adaptable and user-friendly. Our job as digital designers is not only about reducing frustrations but also about delivering an enjoyable experience. Here we use storytelling to our advantage. Digital storytelling is already interactive by its very nature. What we can then add and connect to strengthens the target group’s relationship with the brand if it is implemented in the right way. Similarly, you get the opposite effect if it is implemented in the wrong way.”
