With immense pride, I share the news that ‘ecoporium by Ball & Doggett’ has been recognised at the APCO 2023 Awards.
Saying “ecoporium wins APCO Award” somehow doesn’t fully capture the intensity and range of emotions. The recognition was a testament to the shared dedication and the privilege of collaborating with Ball & Doggett to create a pioneering platform that has impacted the Australian packaging industry.
The ecoporium website for Ball & Doggett is more than just a website; it’s an educational resource and an information forum that drives commercial decisions for Ball & Doggett’s customers while supporting their sustainable goals. This project is a testament to the vision and dedication of Zaidee Jackson and Ball & Doggett, a trusted partner for brands as they explore materials for their products and how this represents them through the lens of their consumers. ecoporium is the start of the conversation around sustainable packaging. It serves as a resource, a meeting place, and a guide to finding alternative products with a detailed product index and links to the full Ball & Doggett Catalogue.
It is an immense privilege to work with Ball & Doggett
I want to take a moment to acknowledge the privilege of working with Ball & Doggett on this incredible project. Their commitment to sustainability and innovation is truly commendable. It has been an inspiring journey collaborating with a team that values responsible practices and the impact of their work on the environment. It was an incredible joy to sink myself into a project that demanded the best of my solution and architecting abilities and allowed me to flex my technical muscles.
A Win for the Industry, Sustainability, and Partnerships
As the Ball & Doggett team and I celebrated this achievement on the awards night last week, and in the days that followed, I was reminded yet again that all outstanding achievements come from a team effort. We rarely succeed without the support of our personal champions, cheerleaders and collaborators. Germinating from a conversation that started with “I have an idea”, grew a collaboration of Industry Associations, subject matter experts and Ball & Doggett partners that now leaves an indelible mark in the portfolio of Rocking Rose and the work we produce and has resulted in a seismic shift in Australian packaging.
What “ecoporium wins APCO Award” really means through the eyes of a “techie”
The ecoporium website is a statement piece designed with sophistication and functionality. It features sleek, understated digital visualisations, interactive elements, and a fully searchable product index. The product index is not intended to sell or have e-commerce features; it’s an educational tool and a gateway to the entire catalogue on another website. All of which is to say that not being an e-commerce site allowed some truly dazzling usability features to be embedded.
On a desktop, the index displays search results as the user types or filters, limiting the table rows immediately to focus on what the user is seeking. The sustainable and product attributes are also filterable. But more than that, it’s a beautiful table like one you’d see in a high-end brochure and not generally on a website.
What’s truly remarkable, though, is the site’s mobile responsiveness, allowing users to explore a collapsed product table that they can expand per item to show the sustainability attributes of the various media in the Ball & Doggett catalogue. It is not a smaller version of the desktop table; it is a design that considers how information can be presented on a smaller mobile device, making that information easy to find and digest.
The same effort was taken with the National Specialist profiles. On the desktop site, these are displayed by clicking through an on-page navigation, with a welcome video and contact details accessed in clickable elements. On the mobile site, however, the profiles are stacked one under the other, and biographies and quotes are viewed through a clickable tab that is collapsed at the start. There is an embedded “jump to top” button, and navigating to a specific specialist is as easy as tapping their name in the mobile navigation at the top of the page.
For the mobile site, we at Rocking Rose focused on creating a user-centric mobile experience, from the custom-sized images on the mobile home page to the entirely different browsing experience when looking through the National Specialist profiles. The mobile website equals and, in some cases, surpasses the desktop in usability, form and function, and we could not be more proud to have been a part of this journey with Zaidee Jackson, and Courtney Newman from Ball & Doggett.
