Empowering the decision-making process for endangered species in Australia

What we were asked to do

Define, design, and develop a decision support system within the Azure ecosystem that could run analytical scenarios, visualise results, and enable effective comparison of outputs — serving both an internal MVP and a public-facing platform.

The situation

Queensland is home to 85% of Australia's mammals, 72% of birds, and just over 50% of its reptiles and frogs. With more than 1,000 species on the threatened list, CSIRO and Queensland's Department of Environment and Science recognised the urgent need to utilise a large and complex dataset to inform investment decisions in endangered species conservation.

Our approach

1. 01Phase 1 — Discovery & Design: Led a six-week design sprint to tackle the complex challenge of building an intuitive platform. Aligned project goals with all stakeholders, synthesised research from 20+ customer interviews, and created detailed personas.
   
2. 02Defined a guiding North Star for the project, generated ideas through intensive ideation sessions, and rapidly transformed the best concepts into a clickable Figma prototype.
3. 03Conducted rigorous prototype testing through multiple end-user interviews, gathering feedback to refine design and functionality. Developed high-level stories for developers and a prioritised delivery roadmap.
4. 04Phase 2 — Development: Collaborated closely with the DESI TSO to navigate complex IT governance. Built the decision support system in Power BI, fully integrated within the DES Azure infrastructure. Delivered in three intensive 20-day sprints with structured stakeholder feedback sessions after each.
   
5. 05Designed comprehensive help and support pages to enrich the user experience, with features enabling detailed querying by taxonomy, threats, location, and conservation status — plus an interactive map and data export capability.

Outcome

The internal MVP was successfully delivered and received overwhelmingly positive feedback — over 90% of interviewees indicated they were likely or very likely to recommend the tool. A prioritised enhancement roadmap was developed ahead of public release, marking a significant milestone in accessible, user-centric environmental data analysis.

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