Imagine the scene where all teachers in Taiwan, wanting to organize an "outdoor teaching trip," used to face a time-consuming and labor-intensive process:

Teachers had to find time outside their busy teaching schedules to sift through an ocean of fragmented information about various venues, cross-compare with their own efforts, and gather experiences and reputations from other teachers to determine if the venue was suitable. For teachers eager to break new ground and develop new teaching plans, is there a platform where they can quickly assess teaching trips with just a few clicks? Now, this dream has been realized by the Ministry of Education and Polish™ for countless teachers!

1. Map Navigation to New Horizons in Education: Explore teaching venues as easily as booking a hotel, with clear visibility of lesson plans

2. One-Stop Access to Taiwan's Teaching Resources: Integrate all outdoor educational venues in Taiwan, plan everything on one platform

3. Collaborative Creation in the Educational Community: Teachers, students, and domain experts jointly develop a growth-oriented platform, enhancing warmth with Taiwan's unique IP

4. Technological Force Reshaping Public Sectors: Agile work processes optimize education resource management, modular techniques are replicable and scalable

I. How to Build an "Up-to-Date" Public Resource Platform?

The "Outdoor Education Resource Platform" is a treasure trove under the Ministry of Education, born out of the need to facilitate teachers in promoting outdoor education. In the past, the focus was on data establishment and management. Although each county and city had its outdoor data, teachers had to switch between multiple systems to complete a single teaching plan, making it difficult for information to be efficiently searched and utilized.

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — Comparison of Entry Page Before and After Renovation

The Ministry of Education recognized the needs of the educational front line and took the opportunity to update the outdoor education resource platform by collaborating with the private sector for innovative solutions. We, Polish™, were invited as the consulting team to assist the Ministry in evaluating how to transform the system to meet the demands of frontline educators, integrating resources across Taiwan's counties and cities, and creating a truly useful entry platform.

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — Route Experience

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — Mobile Version Display

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — Design Elements

II. Learn from the Market! Turn Maps into Educational Exploration Tools

After Polish™ conducted step-by-step interviews with teachers, it was found that teachers traditionally imagined outdoor teaching venues primarily as recreational sites. However, in recent years, historical museums, ecological areas, and community-run small shops have been incorporated into meaningful educational itineraries, becoming suitable resources for outdoor education.

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — Development Strategy Focus Working Visits

Furthermore, to align the user experience with commercial platforms, the Polish™ team researched specialized service websites like Booking and Google Travel for itinerary arrangements. Combined with interviews with frontline educators, we further discovered real user needs:

• Teachers need to know crucial decision-making information when developing lesson plans, such as "What is suitable to teach at this location?" "How far is the venue from the school?"

• An abundance of detailed information (like national highway traffic methods) complicates platform information.

• Teachers generally wish for a simpler search and selection process for teaching venues, as convenient as booking hotels online when traveling.

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — Map Exploration Experience

In response to these practical needs, the team focused on developing a highly customized "interactive map," designed with Mapbox to create a user-friendly platform that is "easy to browse and easy to find":

• Easily locate and save nearby teaching venues, similar to using Google Maps.

• Upload and share your outdoor teaching arrangement experiences, discuss educational circumstances, and handling methods.

• Venue providers (such as museums and farms) can list activity information for users' reference.

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — Route Exploration Experience

III. Develop and Actively Assist with Marketing! Taiwan's Unique IP Enhances Educational Platform

To enhance affinity and platform trust, the Polish™ team specially designed a series of exclusive characters for the "Outdoor Education Resource Platform."

Based on successful experiences in outdoor education-related fields in advanced countries like Europe, the US, and Japan, the team designed suitable mascots for family-friendly engagement as platform IP. These characters not only make the platform more interesting but can also be directly applied to various aspects of related business marketing, strengthening dissemination effects and increasing affinity.

Recently, public sector IPs have been trending towards using "Taiwan’s endemic species." Polish™ aimed to further advance the design style, accommodating both "tourism promotion" and "venue exhibition" purposes. The animal imagery in this design shows distinct specialization in brushstroke, style, and even character limb designs, such as forest species representing "land education" and ocean creatures symbolizing "marine education," are products of this guiding principle.

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — IP Community Application

"Our design target is to make these adorable animal characters debut across Taiwan's outdoor education venues. The characters themselves also carry educational knowledge functions, ultimately forming a universal identification mark and brand asset." — Polish™ Team

III. Modular Technology Development

Since the start of development, the team's focus was on "creating a complete system suitable for museums/cultural assets." The team realized development logic into the following modules:

• Multi-user login and easy-to-use permission system: Applicable to any platform requiring collaboration among different users

• Real-time updates and customizable interactive maps: The team established templates that can quickly apply to other projects needing maps

• Automated data content editor: Supports uploading hundreds of data entries at a time, and can automatically check for correct format

• Agile development suitable for the public sector: Combines traditional documentation procedures with agile development mode module processes

Outdoor Education Resource Platform — Member System

With this approach, the entire system becomes a "reusable" Lego module, allowing the team to quickly adjust and deploy these blocks according to changing priorities, saving institutions a considerable amount of communication time and development costs, and focusing more on user needs and customized experiences.

IV. Public Sector + Tech Team = Innovative Work Culture

"The Outdoor Education Resource Platform is fortunate to have encountered Polish™ to assist with website setup. During the process, they wisely use various software tools, guiding Polish™ step by step to discuss and clarify issues. What brings peace of mind is that they not only handle surface situations but, through detailed discussion and analysis, effectively lead Polish™ to grasp the core issues, enabling the successful launch of this satisfying outdoor education resource platform." — Lai (Youshan Stone Palace Division) / Platform PO / NUTC

At the inception of the "Outdoor Education Resource Platform," it began with only 5 venues but grew mature with the Ministry of Education's strong promotion and enthusiastic feedback from teachers regarding platform design. This platform participation and data upload volume significantly increased, recently achieving the exciting result of "60+ venues joining in a single week."

Seeing the transformation of colleagues at the Ministry of Education from initially saying "This system is too complex!" to proactively responding "This tool is really convenient!" is undoubtedly inspiring for the team. But if you ask what the biggest challenges and core strategies are for a large-scale national project to proceed smoothly, perhaps the key lies in changing the "communication methods" and "work processes." To address multiple departments and complex decision levels in the project, the Ministry of Education and Polish™ team introduced a new work approach:

• No longer relying on LINE for communication messages, switching to trackable and categorized IRC collaboration platform

• Completely adopting online collaboration documents, no longer sending offline Word files back and forth

• Setting up a clear task card system, making every change and development progress clear at a glance

By implementing these systems and tools, overall communication efficiency, collaborative culture, error reduction, and project stability were enhanced. Ultimately, the cooperative relationship between both parties resulted in Polish™ evolving from an "outsourced vendor" to a genuine "partner team" for the platform — this cultural shift in collaboration is exceedingly valuable, aside from the project itself.

"Exceeding client expectations and realizing goals typically deemed impossible, finding mutual objectives with clients to avoid addressing issues superficially is the foundation of clients' trust in our designs, and it is the value Polish™ is built upon." — Kevin, Design Director

This project brings the greatest value to Polish™ in discovering "how to establish a vibrant cooperative relationship with the public sector," fully embodying the Ministry of Education's determination as the nation's highest education authority to innovate and adeptly utilize digital transformation.

Platform link: https://outdoor.moe.edu.tw