Ep. 124: Designing for A Pandemic—New Zealand’s Success Story
In this episode of Clever we’re deconstructing the success of New Zealand’s response to COVID-19 through a lens of design in a conversation with Ana Monroe, a civic design strategist and Akiko Kurematsu, a design and culture journalist in Auckland. New Zealand is considered a major success story in how they reacted to and contained the spread of Coronavirus, so we took a deep look at that success, by doing what designers do: taking it apart to see how it works.
Read the full transcript here.
Akiko Kurematu: Knowing that the goal was elimination and here’s a system that would get us there, with clear steps that were simple to follow and outlined and defined by the government and communicated to us, it filtered it down to a language that even children could understand.
Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today, we are deconstructing the success of New Zealand's response to coronavirus through a lens of design. In a conversation with Anna Munroe, who you may remember from episode 93 and Akiko Kurematu, a design and culture journalist in New Zealand. As you know, New Zealand is considered a major success story in how they reacted to and contained the spread of coronavirus. We wanted to take a deep look at that success by doing what designers do, taking it apart to see how it works. Before we get into it, I want to take a moment offer a sincere and deeply heartfelt thank you to healthcare workers, essential workers, and everyone on the frontlines. You are all heroes. And I want to check in onyou listeners out there, how are you doing? This has been and continues to be a time of tremendous change. I hope you’re safe, and well, and able to look for the silver linings. Ok, now let’s talk to Anna and Akiko.
Anna Munroe: My name is Anna Munroe, I live in Los Angeles, California and I am a designer, working in the civic design space.
AK: My name is Akiko Kurematu am in Oakland, New Zealand and I am a culture writer and a journalist and a curator here in Auckland for the New Zealand Architecture and Design Film Festival, alongside another female curator that I work with.
AD: I am very excited to have this conversation because here in the US we’ve had kind of a disjointed and problematic response to the Coronavirus pandemic and Anna and I have been having conversations about this and trying to figure out, she’s coming from a civic design angle and trying to figure out what’s happening and how it could be better. And as we’re trying to wrap our heads around this, she made contact with you, you guys know each other, you’re colleagues, right?
AM: We were friends, we were friends, we were at school together maybe.
AK: So we’ve actually, we actually met when we were teenagers I think Anna?
AM: We did (laughs).
AD: I love this. So anyway, we had this brilliant idea to get you on the phone so that we could kind of, because New Zealand’s response has been playing out with remarkable effectiveness. And so I wanted to get all three of us together to just kind of deconstruct what New Zealand has done, so we can maybe get a handle on what some of the factors and actions were that led to such a favourable outcome. Thank you so much for lending your voices to this discussion and why don’t we start by learning a little bit more about where you’re coming from.
AK: My name is Akiko, I was born in Japan and I hold a Japanese citizenship. I was raised between five different countries around the world and educated in the US where I met Anna in New York City. And I ended up marrying, I met my husband in Paris and married him and lived in London for a few years. But as a New Zealander he wanted to come back to his beautiful country and I decided to follow him back here.
So I just want to clarify that I was not born and raised in New Zealand but I have moved to New Zealand as an immigrant and I am almost on my third year of residing here in Auckland as a permanent resident.
AD: nna, where are you coming from?
AM: Well I live here in Los Angeles, California, but I actually was not born and raised here either. I grew up in rural Georgia and I mostly wanted to contribute to this conversation because I think that Akiko, you offer such an amazing perspective with your background and experience and curatorial eye to something that is truly a global problem. And the asymmetrical response is maybe not the most efficient way to deal with the global pandemic, so I’m excited to have this conversation.
AD: Asymmetrical response, what do you mean by that?
AM: That means New Zealand’s response doesn’t match in scale or process to the US response, which doesn’t match in scale or process to the Taiwan response or to the German response or to Brazilian. And of course I’m mixing up countries here that are more successful and less successful, but that’s intentional, that’s asymmetry.
AD: Got it, breaking down New Zealand’s success, as I understand it, as of the recording of this conversation, it’s been 20 or so days since the last new case of COVID-19, the last known infected person has recovered. There have been only 22 COVID related deaths. They have one of the highest per capita testing rates, over 300,000 people. And you’re fully reopened, you guys are all back in business with the exception of border restrictions.
AK: That’s right.
AD: That’s phenomenal.
AK: It’s been incredible. It’s almost a month actually since we’ve reopened and it is surreal because we were locked down in a very, with very strict rules to what we could and could not do here for about seven weeks and my husband and I both worked from home. We were isolated from our friends and family and much like the rest of the world, we were living in a very uncertain time, not sure of what the future held for us.
AD: What would you say were some of the contributing factors to the success of how New Zealand responded to this? For one thing, it’s got isolated geography so –
AK: Absolutely, absolutely and I think that’s a major, major reason that New Zealand was shielded from the pandemic in the way that it was. The first confirmed case here wasn’t reported until late February and that’s almost a month after the US and the UK and Australia had their first cases. So we were able to kind of look at the rest of the world, see what was going on, assess and put in measures early and that’s definitely an advantage to the distance and the isolation of New Zealand, being in our little corner of the world here in the Pacific (laughs).
AD: What would you say the social and cultural attitudes are there?
AK: Yeah, I mean it is a very laid back culture here in New Zealand. It’s a nation of European immigrants; more than 70% of the population live within western cultural norms. So you greet each other with a handshake or a hug or a kiss and there is a minority indigenous Māori population which is about 16-17% of the population. And they live by a mixed western and indigenous culture. And I think most of you may know that there is a deep and oftentimes dark history of colonization here in New Zealand.
And that the minority indigenous population have experienced some heavy intergenerational trauma of colonization and a lot of their language, a lot of their identity, a lot of their cultures and customs have been pushed aside. But they do hold many of their cultural rituals, such as meeting the nose and the forehead, called a ‘hongi’ when they greet one another.
One thing that really surprised me when I first visited New Zealand, because of that relaxed culture and so much of the population living in rural or coastal areas, this is purely from kind of (laughs) a culture of hygiene point of view, but that shoes are optional in public spaces. It is considered normal within New Zealand culture not to wear shoes walking down the street or at the supermarket. Having lived, before moving to New Zealand, in London, Tokyo and New York, it was really quite shocking to see people with no footwear on.
But I think this kind of shows how relaxed New Zealanders are and how relaxed their hygiene practices are and the practice of hand washing or hand sanitizing or wearing masks were not part of everyday life before COVID-19.
AD: That paints a pretty clear picture. Something that we’ve seen from over here in the States, that I’ve been particularly impressed with is leadership. It seems to me, from over here, that it’s been decisive, compassionate, organized and communication has been really effective. But I want to hear from you because you’re on the ground there, how would you describe the leadership?
AK: I think it’s hard to talk about New Zealand and not mention our prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and before I came to the recording of this podcast I promised myself I wouldn’t sound like such a Jacinda fangirl (laughter) because she has done such an incredible job and her leadership style of leading with empathy has been so effective and so unique and so refreshing.
I think her inclusive style of leadership has been a major key to the success of containing the pandemic here. Her government has kept the pandemic has a health issue, not a political issue and they have largely avoided the type of battle between economic and public health interests that other countries are experiencing. So we’ve seen a cooperation between public health institutions, politicians and the people who live here in New Zealand.
One of the things that Ardern said at the onset of the pandemic is she said, “We will get through this together, but only if we stick together, so please be strong and be kind.” And that really set the tone for how the government was dealing with the pandemic.
AD: I’m so jealous (laughter).
AK: Yeah, it’s incredible to watch her navigate this crisis and many of you may remember the Christchurch terrorist attack that happened and her quick and swift and decisive actions taken against gun control after that incident. But there were so many examples of her decisiveness and her leading by example throughout the last two months.
For example, Ardern, along with the ministers and the public service chief executives immediately took a 20% pay cut lasting six months and this was to show to the country that they were standing in solidarity and they wanted to show leadership to those who were being hit hardest during the pandemic. And specifically, just to give you an idea, Ardern’s salary was cut by about 47,000 New Zealand dollars.
AD: That wasn’t just a ornamental demonstration, that was real.
AK: That was and so many of those around her took the same action, it really shined a bright light on her leadership and how effective it is. I think her ratings, based on numerous sources have skyrocketed during the last two months and her leadership style and just her empathy that she showed to those who were hit by the pandemic was really warm and comforting and it made us feel safe. It was very, very inspiring to see.
AD: She also closed everything down very strictly and very early, right?
AK: That’s right, so something she said and she has repeated is, go hard, go early and with no confirmed cases in the country, New Zealand banned entry of foreigners from, or who have travelled through mainland China by February 3rd. So that was when there were no reported cases to the Ministry of Health here. And then with 40 cases confirmed, she completely shut the borders except to Kiwi nationals coming back home.
And these early closures helped shield the population from the breakout that was happening, that we saw overseas. We entered a very, like I said, a very strict, high level lockdown, with only 102 confirmed cases, four probable cases and no deaths. And this early entry into self-isolation and social distancing made contact tracing and managing the community outbreak possible.
AM: So about closing the borders, in the United States we had states who attempted maybe to regulate their borders, not close them because that’s actually illegal under the constitution, states cannot impede the movement of people or goods across state lines. But there was a concern right, people leaving large city centers like New York and going to places like Connecticut or Vermont or any place like that. Did you all see in New Zealand concern around people leaving city centers and going into the countryside or was that just not an issue?
AK: It’s absolutely an issue. Under level four lockdown we were not allowed to visit our family in the regions. We weren’t allowed to go to our holiday homes, they’re called ‘baches’ here, but any secondary homes that people may have near the water or in the mountains, they were not allowed to visit their baches. So travel was strictly restricted and we were confined in our homes except for these mental health exercise and breaks that we could have in our neighborhood. But we were restricted to a very, very small area outside of our homes.
AD: How did everybody get on board with that, was there resistance or?
AK: Using Google, they mapped out the movement of people around New Zealand during this level four lockdown and it was impressive to see that it showed that most people abided by the lockdown rules. And that they stayed confined to their homes and their immediate neighborhoods. So there was a lot of clear direction given from the government on what was to be done and a lot of compliance from the public.
AD: Clear direction, (laughs) ahh!
AK: What?
AM: Yeah!
AD: I’m jealous of it and I believe in it so wholeheartedly and we have not had that here. We’ve definitely had a bunch of governors and mayors doing their damndest, but we’ve not had any kind of unified clear direction. How was that communicated to the population of New Zealand?
AK: Yeah, I found this really impressive as well, that there was amazing management and communication throughout. And one of the things they did was to set a national goal and strategy and they communicated this to the public. So the national goal, and everyone knew this, was elimination rather than suppression or mitigation. I found this a differentiating term to the rest of the world, everyone else was and is talking about ‘flattening the curve.’
We heard this a lot and it was used as a hashtag, but for us, it was about elimination and I don’t think elimination means eradicating the virus permanently from New Zealand because once you open up borders and you have free, people coming in and out of the country, it’s very hard to say, “No, we have shut the virus out completely.” But it means that we’ve confidently eliminated the chain of transmission in the community and can effectively contain any future imported causes from overseas.
AM: I wonder, has it ever happened in New Zealand before?
AK: I mean this pandemic has hit New Zealand in an unprecedented way, for sure. I spoke to a public health physician who has been pulled into the COVID-19 response and she has revealed that there was an unpreparedness, lack of preparation for a pandemic of this size to hit New Zealand. And it comes from, much of the similar issues that they have all around the world, that has a public healthcare system, but it is generally underfunded.
And kind of future proofing for a pandemic is not the biggest priority and has not been the biggest priority for the public health sector. So it wasn’t like New Zealand had foresight or based on past experience of SARS or another viral outbreak. It was in fact unprepared for this pandemic.
AD: We had all kinds of issues with not being able to ramp up testing and not having enough PPE to protect people, were there issues like that? It sounds like you guys got it under control before it got so enormous that you overwhelmed the system?
AK: Yeah, I think Ardern’s stance of go hard, go early was effective in kind of minimizing the need for all of the resources that would have been needed. If hospitals were overwhelmed and we were to experience a severe lack of PPE or other medical needs, I think it would have been a very different story, but the go hard, go early stance mitigated some of those kinds of reactionary measures that we would have had to take.
AD: I understand that there was a four level alert system that was pretty quickly unveiled, that helped guide people through the pandemic itself and how restrictive things needed to be. Can you talk about that a little bit?
AK: That’s right and this is something that I think that interests a lot of leaders around the world. It’s a four level alert system that gives the public an indication of where we are at, at all times throughout the campaign. So as the pandemic escalated here, the alert levels rose and signalled a sense of seriousness. And then when it de-escalated it gave us a sense of confidence and accomplishment and it really unified the entire nation, giving us a sense and a feeling that we were all in it together.
It’s called the COFID-19 Alert System and the four levels were level one, prepare, level two, reduce, level three, restrict and level four, lockdown. So when we entered this alert system we started at level two. Quickly escalated to level four where we were at for about five weeks. Went down level by level with the drop of new cases and we are now down at level one where we have very few restrictions in place except for a closed border.
AD: So the whole entire population of New Zealand always knew where you stood, you always knew what level you were on and what associated behaviours and restrictions and cautions were associated with that level?
AK: That’s right and I think coupled with kind of knowing what the goal was as well, that the goal was elimination and here’s a system that would get us there, with clear steps that were simple to follow and outlined and defined by the government and communicated to us, it made it really easy to understand. It didn’t make it this scary kind of unknown virus that was floating everywhere. It filtered it down to a language that we all understood, that almost, that even children could understand the four levels of lockdown. And that kind of simple vocabulary, a simple language was really useful.
AD: I feel like over here in the United States and Anna, you can chime in with your perspective too, but we were more playing whack-a-mole, it’s like these hot spots were cropping up all over and we all had different levels of fear and urgency and lockdown and it was sort of loosely defined by geography. Sometimes mayors were setting it, sometimes governors and there was no cohesiveness. Obviously we’re a big country with individual states and movement is a little bit more difficult to control. But a clear system like that, I think would have given everybody a sense of how serious it is.
AM: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that what’s sadly ironic here is that the United States has a very long tradition of this exact sort of model, this exact design strategy to mitigate emergencies and disasters. The most well-known one, probably, I may be speaking because I’m from a hurricane quarter, is the hurricane and tornado alert system. So we all know those levels, if a big one is coming, it’s a five to a seven and they all get names and they’re named in order of the alphabet.
And you know what triggers are stay at home, you know when to board up your houses, you know when to evacuate. The other one that’s pertinent here in Southern California electric now has a alert system for wild fire risk and they actually shut off the power to customer bases when there’s a high, a very high risk of wildfire outbreak.
And so this model is not unknown here in the United States. I think the difference is that Akiko in New Zealand, you all accepted that there was a risk right? You accepted that COVID-19 was a huge risk to the population and in the United States, to your point Amy, it was not accepted. Some people were saying this is not a risk and other people were saying it’s a huge risk. So if you don’t have a collective acceptance of risk then you cannot put in place a strategy for mitigating that risk.
AD: Anna, that’s a really good point, the hurricane system, we could have easily implemented, we also have the terror alert system.
AM: Yes we do, it’s actually very effective. I mean we haven’t had a major terrorist attack since September 11th and I have no insight into the intelligence community, I want to very much emphasize that, but it feels like it’s a statistically a probable that no one has tried (laughs) right?
AD: It could have been so easy just to implement, adapt one of the systems that we already have and implement that, to help communicate to people the level of severity. That’s a really nice parallel, thank you for pointing that out. Akiko, I wanted to try and understand what were some of the mechanics of implementing this plan. Were there tech applications developed or communications campaigns or policies that were put in place?
AK: Those who know Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern may not know that she holds a Bachelor of Communication Studies and specifically in public relations and political science, which she studied before entering her career in politics. So she is known as an extremely effective communicator, focusing on bringing people together. Amy, many of your listeners who come from advertising or design backgrounds, they may recognize a very kind of distinct campaign feel to her communication strategy.
She leveraged many of the tools, such as a very simple phrase that was repeated over and over again, to drive a point home. It was ‘stay home, stay safe, be kind.’ And it almost operated like a tagline and she would say at the end of her press conferences, she would say that at the end of her Facebook live videos. She would post something on Instagram and it would end with ‘stay home, stay safe, be kind.’
And it was so effective in its simplicity and the consistent repeating of it drove it really into our psyche and we all knew that the three most important things during lockdown was to stay home, stay safe and to be kind to each other. So that operated almost like a tagline and with that tagline she also offered some really visual and flexible language and vocabulary.
She established what a bubble is, what a cluster is and many may not have been familiar with what an essential worker is, but she defined these terms very clearly. A bubble is your family or it’s the roommates that you live with under one roof and once that you have acknowledged your bubble, there was a visual element to it where you couldn’t break your bubble. You didn’t go and pop other people’s bubbles, but in very limited cases such as when you share custody with children in the same city or if an elderly family member lived alone and needed care, you could actually join those bubbles.
AD: That’s so effective (laughs), just to pain that picture –
AK: Yeah, I think, yeah, and I loved also how flexible a bubble is, in that, like I said before, even a child could visualize what happens when you burst a bubble and nothing good (laughs) happens when you burst the bubble. So there was a bubble. A cluster, it was when there were 10 or more cases connected through transmission who are not all part of the same household. So a cluster would be maybe a wedding that happened in February where there was a case from overseas that attended that wedding and spread.
There was community spread in that cluster to 10 or more people. Or it may be a tourist area in Queenstown that had an outbreak of 10 or more people in that specific tourist spot. Or it may be elderly homecare, that facility that had a community outbreak of 10 or more people and so that would be called a cluster.
AD: That’s also very descriptive, the bubble you get this picture of safe interior space with a membrane that’s keeping you safe.
AK: Totally.
AD: And the cluster just feels a little bit chaotic and there’s complete permeableness like people are coming and going and you get why –
AK: And I wasn’t sure, are those terms used in the US right now?
AM: Cluster is, bubble is not.
AD: Yeah, we’ve talked about cluster a little bit, but we did not have, it would have been so helpful to have the idea of a bubble, just to share with our children, language to talk about this with our kids or even just amongst ourselves, we’ve talked about our inner circle and the idea of joining bubbles has come up, but we all have to fish around for our own language for it and not everybody has defined it for themselves.
AK: Right, yeah, that was so helpful and to know exactly what an essential worker is and does. Highlighting essential healthcare providers, food suppliers who work as part of the food supply chains, garbage and waste removal, electrical and internet suppliers, banks and those institutions that are part of the financial infrastructure. To know who was supporting our livelihood, every day, during lockdown, was very, very helpful. And also it uplifted the people who were essential during that time.
AD: It sounds like language was an important part of this.
AK: Yeah, it was a huge part of it and it was used in tandem with a graphic design language. So a graphic design campaign that was instantly recognizable and told us, this was an official message from the government, was used consistently through the last two months. It comprised of a yellow, white and black color palette. It had this diagonal stripe graphic. This large, clear type in black and sometimes it had very simple graphic illustrations.
So this branding was used on all official communications regarding COVID-19 and it was used on posters, on social media, on TV ads, and mailers that we would receive at home, giving us the information about the pandemic. Businesses were able to download and print signage communicating what level we were in. What social distancing measures were in place and as soon as a contact tracing app was available, you could download a COVID tracer, QR card poster and put it at the entryway of your business.
And this graphic design language was consistent across all of these materials. So if you were driving, going to the supermarket, you would see it on a billboard. You would see it on your phone if you were browsing Instagram or Facebook. It would be, it really infiltrated every part of our lives during the lockdown. And it was so recognizable and so ubiquitous that again, a child could recognize that this was some sort of official information about the pandemic.
AM: So, I want to add here, hearing this makes me extremely, oddly proud of New Zealand. I have nothing to be proud of, I’m not a part of New Zealand, but I’m very proud of New Zealand somehow, it feels very humane, very smart and it also makes me incredibly taken aback at the US response because again, like the alert system, we actually do have an incredibly robust graphic design system in the US.
It’s called the US Web Design System and it’s actually written into law that every federal, it’s only federal because obviously it doesn’t tell the states what to do, every federal digital communication must use the US Web Design System. It’s there, I’ve worked with it, you can work with it, it’s open source and so again, the possibility of having this type of graphic language is absolutely at our fingertips in this country and we just missed the mark and that makes me really upset.
AD: I had no idea, thank you for illuminating that aspect because I was about to ask you, how would we go about doing that in the States and I’m really mad to find out that we already have a system in place and it just wasn’t utilized.
AM: Yeah, it’s open source, you can download it and get help right now if you want to, use it in your digital communications. But again, I think it goes back to the consensus that there is risk and that there needs to be a concerted response. We didn’t have that consensus and so the strategy that you all in New Zealand were able to construct and execute on could not even be started.
AD: Quick question, technical question, you mentioned there were QR code posters that businesses could print and post at the entryway, was that so that you could scan it with your phone and it would enter your information into a contact tracing app or how –
AK: That’s right, so QR codes weren’t really ubiquitous here, no one, there was nothing that kind of led to the QR code being a solution, but suddenly it appeared as a tool during the pandemic, as a way to contact trace. So I would say that it was a very risky and highly experimental move for New Zealand and I actually love that they put something out that was experimental and imperfect.
And they took a risk in putting something like this out there and trusted the public to be able to figure out how to utilize this tool. So we would scan it with our phones and it would lead to a site where you could enter very simple details on where you are, who you are with and it would log that information into your own account. And it would be used to, in the future, if there was a case, an active case, it would be used to contact trace and provide more information for those who are in that vicinity.
AD: And that was all proactive. I mean that wasn’t, we have a case, now we need to figure out who else you’ve been around, it’s like log yourself, keep a diary of this so that we know where you’ve been in case a case turns up.
AK: That’s right and with no precedent of a culture of using QR codes. It was an interesting step that they took to provide QR codes across the country for people to use and utilize as a main contact tracing tool for the nation. I use it, every business that I enter has the QR code poster on the entryway that I scan with my phone and it takes two seconds for me to register where I’ve been. Yeah, I hope that in the future it will be useful if there are more cases here.
AD: That’s really innovative.
AM: We don’t have this exact, it’s not like the graphic design system, but we don’t have this exact thing, but we do have the potential at a local level to do that. And it’s where you can drop a pin, a very specific pin and say there’s a pothole here or my garbage hasn’t been collected or various sundry civic things that happen that you don’t need emergency services for. As you’re describing this Akiko, I just can only think that a simple sort of extension to an LA411 style app and they’re really, really functional, could actually get us closer to there. Definitely not to the extent of New Zealand because it requires the consent of the population but we have, again, the tools, we just don’t have the application.
AK: And I wonder also, I come from Japan where things are, things like apps would never ever be released in a developing form. Japanese culture inherently likes to perfect things before they, and test before they release something like this. And I think it shows an aspect of the New Zealand culture that they can release an imperfect app that is still developing and let everyone know that there will be updates made to the usability and the effectiveness of the app and trust that the public will still experiment and accept it without it being perfect.
AD: Well, I also think, the swiftness with which it was deployed, combined with the graphic design language and the confidence the public had in the efforts the government were making, all kind of worked in a beautiful synergy.
AK: Absolutely. Like I mentioned, Prime Minister Ardern’s effective communication was such a pillar of this pandemic response in New Zealand. And one of the things that she did, and I think that leaders, presidents, prime ministers, governors, held these kind of press conferences around the world. But Prime Minister Ardern held a press conference at 1:00pm every day and it was broadcast on TV and radio as well as streamed on Facebook live.
But the press conference always opened with the PM deferring to her director general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, to give updates on cases, including the latest new active and recovered cases, clusters and deaths. Although the prime minister was front and center at these press briefings, if she would be asked a question from a journalist about health, she would always defer to Dr Bloomfield for clear fact and science based answers.
I thought that was a really great example of leadership, of seeing the prime minister rely on someone who knew more about public health than she does. And having the trust and confidence to have Dr Ashley speak for himself and he was such a calm voice during a chaotic time. And he has emerged as somewhat of a national hero and a local celebrity from his sudden exposure to the general public through these daily press conferences. So much so that there’s now merch (laughs) -
AM: There’s merch?
AD: Wow.
AK: The director general of health has merch, not made by him, but there’s totes and t-shirts with the doctors face calling him the ‘Curve Crusher’ and (laughs) you can purchase this merch. I believe the funds go to a good cause. So these updates were a daily dose of reassurance, delivered with a kind of calm and compassion and certainty that the public needed at that time.
AD: No one person can know everything, so the deference to somebody who knows more than the prime minister does is reassuring and then obviously like the public adoration of him means they’re all relying on him to help get us through this and nobody is undermining what he’s saying. We’ve had some undermining here in the States that I think has really done a disservice to our unity in this situation - Dr Anthony Fauci became a little bit of a hero as well, but he did not get the same support from leadership, as I think would have been beneficial for us all to have. You know, a trustworthy source to just sort of sink into, okay, he knows what’s happening, we’re gonna follow his lead. Maybe next pandemic! (Laughter)
AK: And it is comforting to see a unified front -
AD: Absolutely.
AK: Even if the public health sector is in chaos and they weren’t prepared for this pandemic and they are really just trying to keep their heads above water, to see a unified front at the daily briefing and it was always fact based and always calm, with the kind of authority that the public wanted to trust. It did give us a sense of confidence and safety that I think that we needed to get through a tough time.
AM: So you all have, so here at the press conferences, Dr Fauci and then the press conferences that here in Los Angeles we had, at one point I think at a daily level. They were for the city governments. So you know, one of the things that has come out as a strength in the United States system from this pandemic is that with multiple kind of layers of government comes the ability to respond. One of the first people to take this seriously was the Mayor of Austin who shut down south by south west in February and I think that was such a bold move. Do you all have those same layers or is New Zealand just not structured that way and it really was all about the federal or national government response?
AK: Yeah, so I think something I should have mentioned earlier was that the population here is shy of five million people. So –
AM: So small.
AK: It’s a fraction of the population in the United States. The reason why you need so many levels of leadership at a federal and state, and correct me if I’m wrong Anna, is I think due to the population and managing that number of people across the country.
AM: Yeah, it’s absolutely true. It’s a very different scale, but it’s just very interesting because undermining, to your point Amy, is so corrosive that I think even if you’ve a few detractors in a pandemic, when it’s life and death, can really do a lot of damage.
AD: Agreed and I’m just thinking, even at scale, the federal government can issue guidelines and best practices and assets and tools and graphic design language and advise on language to use around things. And distribute that out to local governments in order to deploy. And at that point you may get some people who don’t adhere to everything as specifically, but still we’ve got some sort of cohesive idea of the seriousness of this.
AM: Yeah, absolutely and that’s why systems like the National Weather Alert System, hurricane alert system work at the federal level because pandemics and hurricanes and tornadoes don’t care what state you’re in. They don’t follow political lines and so having a federal strategy to bind together state responses is in fact the point of the federal government. There are some things that don’t stop where the line crosses from Georgia to Alabama or whatever, and that’s what a pandemic is.
AK: Absolutely,.
AM: You all are pretty much, you’re at level one, which is completely reopened except international travel, is that right?
AK: That’s right, so we can fully participate in society without any COVID-19 related restrictions at the moment. The only difference to kind of pre-pandemic life here is the strict border measures that remain.
AM: And in that, there’s no need to go back over the pillars that you have already outlined for us, but how, are there triggers for if you go back up to two or three or four, are those outlined or what are the pillars that that plan to say, this is safe, this is not safe?
AK: There hasn’t been an outline of how many cases, new cases there needs to be for us to go up a level, back up to level two or kind of any kind of numerical figure attached to any of the alert levels. But we know that there are still kind of daily updates being made and surveillance at the borders and now that there are no new cases here, locally and community outbreak, is very low probability. I think it’s a matter of, again, kind of communication and leadership when those new cases arrive.
AM: That makes a lot of sense. Given your experience in the pandemic, without those articulated thresholds, like numerical, we need this many cases to go back up to level two or whatever, how do you feel about not quite knowing what the threshold is? As a citizen or residents, how do you feel?
AK: Yeah, I think so many of us here; we have really pivoted our priority to the economy. We feel confident that our health is secure and we need to help bring the economy back. The New Zealand economy is expected to sink into recession, so it is an urgent priority and with the borders still being closed, sectors like tourism, hospitality, are experiencing a devastating economic time. So unemployment is on the rise, so there’s a lot of work to be done here and quickly, as soon as the pandemic was under control we’ve seen the prime minister bring in the minister of, our economic ministers and call on them to raise awareness of what New Zealanders can do to revive this sinking economy.
Currently there’s a 12.1 billion economic package from the government, including wage subsidy, interest free business loans, access to free retraining that many of us have taken advantage of. But aside from that, there’s a lot of communication about supporting local small businesses and domestic travel. There’s an advertising agency here called Special Group, here in Auckland and they work with Tourism New Zealand.
They have a beautiful campaign about New Zealanders discovering their backyards. So now that we can travel domestically, why don’t we go and rediscover regional parts of New Zealand in the form of lodges or great walks or a camping trip with your family. So there’s a lot of effort in putting money back into the economy.
AD: Oh, that’s beautiful, that makes a lot of sense.
AM: Yeah, I know that here in the US that the Department of Interior which administers all the national parks, is looking at, and you can see this on recreation.gov, looking at that same sort of thing, but it just doesn’t feel like we’ve heard it Amy. I don’t know if you would agree?
AD: I don’t even think it’s really safe to go to a gas station yet, you know (laughter).
AM: So I wish we could do the same because New Zealand is famous, famous, famous for its beautiful landscape and we have some stuff in the US that’s not bad to look at, I think (laughs).
AK: Oh my gosh.
AD: But I love a road trip and I’m honestly, like so earnestly itching to get out and reconnect with my country and my people and I remember growing up in Michigan there was this campaign, ‘Say Yes to Michigan’ and it was showing you all the beautiful lakes and opportunities, I don’t know, it seeped into my psyche and it made me love my state and how beautiful it was and I really wish we had something like that happening here in the US because I’ve been looking at camper vans to rent online and thinking about getting…
AM: Yes!
AD: I’m serious, I still don’t know what the safety level is cause (laughs) –
AM: Totally.
AD: But I wanted to ask you too Akiko, you said there was access to free retraining.
AK: Yeah, so this is a new initiative that was announced a few weeks ago, but for those who have lost their jobs, which there are many across many, many sectors. They’re basically through their website educating about what kind of classes are available, what kind of training is available and you can choose to sign up and it is completely free. It is nationwide and it is immediate, it starts immediately.
AD: We don’t have anything like that here do we?
AM: We don’t at the federal level. We’ve lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of individual programs through the Department of Labor and the Department of Education, but like so many of the things that we’ve talked about in this time, they’re pretty siloed. It would be, I cannot off the top of my head think of a single place, a single place to go that I could be like, go there, you know? Again, the possibility, the resources are there, the sort of decision to do that, to allocate resources, to bring together these various programs which could be very effective, I don’t know of any efforts to do that.
AD: It occurred to me that even, so our problem is that all these programs are siloed, they’re all called something different, nobody knows where to find them –
AM: Yes.
AD: I know if I did a Google search for free job retraining, it would turn up search results that would be absolutely unusable.
AM: Right, right.
AD: So I’m thinking back to the language, the language thing. Even if all of those different programs employed a certain kind, even key search terms that were all the same, or something so that a Google search might be more useful, if they were all called –
AM: Optimized.
AD: Optimized, called something similar or employed some common language in their descriptions, maybe it would be easier
AM: You’re absolutely spot on, just, I think two weeks ago, maybe one week ago, time doesn’t have a meaning in lockdown, as we all know, the new civilrights.justice.gov launched and it’s a portal for lodging civil rights complaints, people who have been discriminated against, for employment housing, education, various things like that. You go to this portal and you can register your complaint and it will be read and it will be investigated and it was always read and it was always investigated. It was just incredibly, like you said Amy, hard to navigate, tough to find, when you Google, where does it come from. And that’s actually built using the US web design system, so it looks very authoritative, it’s very consistent and it’s pretty easy to do, even when you’re in distress, which of course is the nature of a person who has experienced discrimination, or a job loss.
These are just incredibly, like traumatic experiences in a life, and so it is the responsibility of the designers to create the easiest possible way to get help.
AK: I love that thought. If I would have, if I were one of those people and I feel so privileged that I’ve been able to keep my job, but I feel so, if I were to have lost a fulltime job then getting an apprenticeship to retrain in an industry like building and construction, agriculture, manufacturing or nursing, counselling, something that was so essential to communities, would be incredibly inspiring and for all of that to be free for two years, I think would give you a sense of real, would give you a path out of your situation. And something to look forward to in the future, so I think this was a very astute initiative to be passed at the moment.
AD: You said a ‘path’ and that reminded me of the psychological value too of having a path to follow because if you don’t feel like there’s any way out of your current trauma, and you don’t know, you feel like you have to carve the path yourself, and it could be anything, it’s really daunting. But Anna and I have been talking a lot about too, like we need to redistribute our workforce and our creativity and our human resources in a post-pandemic world.
They’re not necessarily gonna land where they landed before the pandemic. So the retraining opportunities are gonna be crucial. For instance, here in the States we don’t have great contact tracing in place yet, but the idea is that we’re gonna have to, it’s gonna be human based and we’re gonna need to hire and train a gazillion contact-tracers (laughs).
AM: It’s so true.
AD: And why isn’t there a simple website I can just go and find out if I could qualify to get training to be a contact tracer?
AK: Absolutely.
AM: Speaking about these disjointed, like very traumatic experiences, like being in lockdown for many weeks and then possibly losing your job and needing to retrain, retraining is such a scary concept, how is the government managing public confusion and concern? It’s now we’re kind of like out of the complete anxiety moment and into this long tunnel of recovery where you all are in in New Zealand. How [** 1.07.38].
AK: I think part of the recovery is going to be this inquiry the government has launched, an inquiry into the urgent legislation used to implement its alert level system and lockdown. So they will be looking into the effectiveness of that and additionally there’s a group of Otago University experts, including Professor Michael Baker and Professor Nick Wilson who are very well-known in the public health sectors.
Who have asked for an independent probe into the government’s wider response to the pandemic. And they have pointed out that New Zealand has done an extraordinarily successful job of stopping the virus but there is a need for deep inquiry to understand the effectiveness of various pandemic controls, to make adjustments or improvements in the short and longer term.
AM: Wow.
AD: So that’s like a design thinking.
AM: Yeah.
AD: We prototype something and then we look for its weaknesses and its fractures in order to make those better, stronger or adapt them to make a better thing, system, product, whatever it is, and that’s what you are doing here. You’ve taken your plan and instead of patting yourself on the back, you’re like okay, let’s really analyze this and figure out where it could even be better.
AK: Hmm-mm and I think the first step of that is acknowledging that you don’t have all the answers and this is an unprecedented situation where you don’t know if what you’ve done has been the most effective in leading you to a successful outcome. So I think these inquiries are really important in not only answering kind of questions, ongoing questions from the public, but answering your own questions, the government answering its own questions about how it responded to such an uncertain time.
AM: So Akiko, if there’s a second outbreak in New Zealand, do you anticipate that you would go along through the alert system as it stands or do you think that this inquiry will be able to influence meaningful changes in the short term? Yeah, how do you think that’ll play out, how has that been communicated to you?
AK: Yeah, I hope that inquiries such as this will inform how we move forward if there are more active cases in the country. And as we move to loosen our borders with our surrounding islands, such as Tonga or Samoa or Fiji, also with our neighbor, Australia, there is a need to future proof for those instances. But also for the future, there is a future of pandemics; this is not the last one, so inquiries such as this is a great deep dive into the nations response. To create a new plan that continues to be successful. One of many, many issues that will need to be addressed is whether immigrant communities such as the Pacifica and Asian populations, or low socioeconomic households, who may not have a television or access to internet in their homes, did they have access to critical information such as government announcements? And were they feeling exempt and scared and confused during an already chaotic time?
Those are questions that need to be asked about health literacy and inequity and allocation of additional resources to these communities. I found that most of the announcements coming from official sources were in English and this is a multicultural, multilingual city, especially Auckland and Wellington and major cities in New Zealand. English may not be spoken as the first language. So translation becomes a huge aspect of communication.
If there is a second wave, I think that the response needs to be more informed and more importantly, more inclusive of these communities.
AD: What’s the general tone and vibe and sense of the pandemic coming from the public there in New Zealand?
AK: I don’t want to paint a picture of, you know, perfection. There’s been many things that have come up. There’s been breach of lockdown from who else but the Ministry of Health. The official, which lacked leadership on such a grand scale, he was not dismissed or fired from his position because Jacinda recognized his value in the public health sector during this time.
But it was not perfect and there are many things that came up, such as kind of the inequity or kind of the systemic injustice or as the systemic kind of differences in the ways that communities were communicated to. But I have to say in general there is a sense of relief coming out of lockdown. We feel lucky, we feel lucky to live in a COVID free world. When we see other parts of the world still reeling from an ongoing pandemic, and I think that the things that we spoke about, that there was a goal of elimination, there was a strategy and a process based on four phases.
There was leadership from government to public health service to essential workers and then there was this communication that was traditional, new tech, formal and informal, but always clear and fact based. But there was a nationwide solidarity with every milestone. When we flattened the curve, when less and less new cases were coming up and the easing of lockdown and gradual elimination of social distancing measures, it felt like a collective achievement.
And there will be ongoing criticism of Prime Minister Ardern on the economic recovery. There will be criticism on aspects of the response, but in general I think there’s a huge sense of relief and gratitude and pride in what was accomplished here in New Zealand.
AD: You know one thing that I think is really important to acknowledge is that healing can take place when you’re not mad and frustrated at how you’ve been impacted. So if people are feeling like they were all in it together and they’re feeling collectively confident and pleased with how, as a nation, you handled the pandemic, then I think healing and recovery can begin and happen so much more effectively than if everybody is still mad and blaming each other because of what a catastrophe it was.
AK: Yeah.
AD: It’s gonna be wonderful to watch New Zealand kind of come out of this and retrain and feel, probably even closer and more connected than before the pandemic, which is, I think, the best possible outcome from a trauma, is if you can feel a galvanization with your people.
AK: Hmm-mm.
AD: I don’t think every country that’s been through this is going to come out of it with that.
AK: Yeah.
AD: Well, what are your guys' conclusions or concerns or ongoing questions?
AK: I think, just like you said, I think we have entered a phase of healing here in New Zealand. It’s nearing a month since coming out of lockdown, so most of our lives have returned back to a sort of normal. As for kind of my last thoughts, I think it’s quick to forget how uncertain those weeks were for us, who and what supported us during critical times. And I want to express my gratitude for healthcare workers as well as essential workers across New Zealand who kept us healthy and safe.
And I don’t want to easily forget their service during that time. I also want to acknowledge that there is widespread job loss across the economy impacting small, local businesses the hardest. And low income Kiwis who may have been hit the hardest were most likely impacted with mental health, with food insecurity and domestic violence, but they still put the priority as the health of New Zealand first. They put their community first. So my heart does go out to all of those who are deeply affected.
Lastly, I’d like to send my best wishes to you guys in America, to cities and nations that are still under lockdown or who may be beginning to see the ease of restrictions. The Maori phrase here that they used during these times is [foreign language] and it means ‘stay strong.’ As we lean into our shared experience around the world and I hope that we can create a new normal and rebuild a new world together.
AM: Yeah, from the US perspective, not to be too optimistic or anything like that, I actually do see a lot of possibility coming out of this moment. I think that through this traumatic experience that we’re still undergoing, to your point Akiko (laughs) we have learned what is an essential worker, what is important, what is not important. I see so many possibilities for us to be a better place to live, a more healthy place to live, more cohesive and not to say flattened, but diverse and strong place to live.
If we have the strength to look at ourselves and say we have all these tools, now it’s time to act. I really think that we can do it. Because we are our government, we live in a democracy; it’s up to us.
AD: Hear, hear! I like to think of things in terms of metaphors and I kind of see this whole situation as the pouring of hydrogen peroxide on a deep and terribly polluted wound.
AK: Yeah.
AD: It’s exposed a lot of inequities in the United States that I think a lot of us are just really galvanized around, dismantling and building, not just a new normal, but a better normal.
AK: Absolutely and the good news is we can do it. We can do it. We will do it. We’ve just got to show up for work.
AM: And I think it was so important to dissect this, all of the aspects of the pandemic response here in New Zealand, through a lens of design. I found it so interesting to look at it as systems and phases and language and graphics and how all of that comes together in communication to the public. So thank you so much for the opportunity Amy and Anna, to allow me to kind of, to pull these pieces apart and put them back again.
And share what’s going on in this island nation very, very far away from you guys. It was an amazing opportunity to look into my experience through the lens of design.
AM: I’m glad you could make it.
AD: So, thank you Akiko and Anna, this has been really insightful. Thank you for listening! We’ve got images and examples from this discussion in the show notes. Click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to Cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter. Subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And do us a favor and rate and review, it totally helps. And if you like what we do here, you can support Clever by sending a one-time donation to the link in the description. We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you can find us at Clever Podcast and you can find me at Amy Devers. Clever is produced by 2VDE Media with editing by Rich Stroffolino and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.
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In New Zealand, the government utilized a unified design language and consistent messaging.
Photo by Lynn Grieveson
Photo by Dr. Rawiri Taonui, Waatea News
QR Code poster for contact tracing
New Zealand established a four level COVID-19 rating system.
The New Zealand government’s COVID-19 resource website.
Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Music in this episode courtesy of El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.
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