Know Tomorrow Platform

Giving millennials a voice to share their views on climate change

CASE STUDY • 3 min read

It’s the summer of 2015, and the world has experienced record-breaking warmth every month so far. Continuing with this trend, 2015 would be well on its way to be the warmest year since records were first gathered (The Guardian News ).

This shouldn’t be news to us. Yet for some reason, even though we know it’s important and that it’ll affect our world today and the generations to come, we don’t really do anything. We simply go on with our lives, leaving it in the back of our minds. If we’re totally being honest with ourselves, the sheer size of this issue simply overwhelms us. We don’t know where to begin. We sure don’t know how to solve it. We definitely can’t do it on our own, individually. And so the easiest thing to do is not care about it.

How can we collectively take action on such a critical issue when we all don’t truly hold climate change as a core value in our everyday lives?

The Know Tomorrow Campaign

In 2015, our agency partnered with Know Tomorrow to see how we could motivate people, specifically 22 million millennial university students across America, to take action on climate change.

Action starts with raising awareness, spurring discussions, and then enabling individuals to follow through with next steps. Our challenge was to design a social platform that encompassed all those aspects, beginning with a call to participate on the national day of action on Oct 2, 2015.

Step 1: Raising awareness through a website

The core part of the platform was a responsive website for students to learn more about the Know Tomorrow campaign, register for the event, and join their university chapter. I strove to design a clear, simple and seamless experience.

Early wireframes of the website

Step 2: Spurring discussions on the Idea Lab

After learning more about the campaign, students needed a place to connect with peers on the topic of climate change. We achieved this by designing the Idea Lab, a digital space similar to Reddit that allowed students from universities all over America to discuss ideas and plan the event.

Mockup of discussions on the Idea Lab

Step 3: Enabling next steps with the Social Wall

Though the plans discussed on the Idea Lab would be executed outside our platform, we could still show students what their peers were doing across the country. This led to the Social Wall, which showcased recent social media posts related to Know Tomorrow. It also fostered a strong sense of pursuing action together.

Mockup of posts on the Social Wall

A visual brand identity targeting the millennial generation

It was also important to establish a visual brand that spoke to millennials, considering their constant connection to the online world. We used imagery to reflect the cultural diversity of students and chose vibrant colours to not only catch their attention, but to also convey the boldness behind taking action on climate change.

Mockups showing the bold colours and rich imagery used on the website

The outcome: Engaged millennials taking action on climate change

The social platform empowered millennials across 60 university campuses to participate in the issue of climate change. To date, there have been 67,858,536 posts on Twitter timelines and 304,078 impressions on Instagram.

Famous celebrities including Ian Somerhalder, Chris Evans, Cheryl Hines and Giancarlo Esposito also joined the movement and promoted Know Tomorrow.

I was also happy to hear that the event and our platform were so successful that Know Tomorrow will be featured in the documentary series Years of Living Dangerously .

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