Challenge
UPM is one of the largest forest companies in the world. The forest industry is facing an ongoing and increasing need to communicate its responsibility and sustainable use of forests. UPM wanted to recreate its internationally acclaimed yet technically outdated Forest Life website – a digital experience created by Valve about a decade ago. The new Forest Life 2020 should take it to the next level in terms of content and user experience. UPM wanted to communicate their modern, sustainable, biodiversity-nurturing forestry practices. Everyone should be able to visit a virtual forest, no matter who you are or where you live. From pre-schoolers to pensioners. From business to pleasure.
Insight
UPM had learned that taking their key audiences to visit real, sustainably managed forests was a good way to get their messages through. The original Forest Life idea of bringing audiences to the forest through touching virtual experiences was valid. Let the visitors form their own opinions based on the information given. We also wanted to provide a broad and touching experience. What do Nordic forests mean to us Finns? They're places for us to calm down as well as to get excited, they're places for learning, places of joy and harmony.
Solution
We realised that the main creative idea and user experience approach should be built on top of the claim “The forest is full of life” – a real experience of seeing, hearing and feeling it wherever you are. The real living forest can be presented only by using real living atmosphere, sights, sounds and the feeling of being there. The main user interface shaped to be walking through the forest on four themed paths – a duration of two hours altogether. The visitors would find a wide variety of different species, people in different roles, experts, nature enthusiasts, people with different hobbies and all UPM forestry activities. There were also various types of films from single species presentation to biotopes and forestry documentaries. Information content behind the experience was generated to serve also educational needs.
The path experience was built on interactive video and all the content was filmed to maintain the living experience. To help users to browse a large amount of content quickly we built a straightforward index view with filtering to skip between different content types easily. We also built an interactive map to navigate and quickly move from place to place in the forest paths. To strengthen the experience, generate more cinematic atmosphere and lift up selected themes, we produced high quality intro films for each of the paths.
Launch
UPM Forest Live was launched at the end of 2019 and initial feedback from users and learning institutions has been overwhelmingly positive.
Credits
Concept & design
Valve
Website development
Wakeone
Video production
Valve Motion
Customer
UPM
Entry categories
Best design
Best website
Best execution
Innovative use of technology