myWorld History Atlas for Jacaranda
The Background
This is an older project but one we wanted to include. Jacaranda were a great client to work with, and the collaboration produced something genuinely good. Jacaranda is one of Australia’s most recognised educational publishers. Following the success of the myWorld Atlas, they came back to Mettro to build a companion product: the myWorld History Atlas, an interactive learning tool for students studying history under the Australian Curriculum. It was the kind of brief that only comes from a client who already trusts you.
The Challenge
History as a subject has a content problem. There is a lot of it, it spans the whole world, and it needs to be taught in a way that students will actually engage with. A static resource wasn’t going to cut it. The product needed to let students explore, test their knowledge, get feedback, and build their own understanding through interaction rather than passive reading.
Our Approach
Mettro redesigned the visual language from the ground up to suit a history product, distinct from the geography-focused Atlas that came before it. An interactive timeline was added as the central navigation device, giving students a way to move through historical periods and studies in a way that felt intuitive rather than instructional.
The product covered 115 historical studies and gave students an online environment to explore content, answer interactive video questions, and build case studies. Mettro’s UX design and digital product development work centred on making the experience clear and engaging for a student audience.
The Outcome
The myWorld History Atlas launched as part of Jacaranda’s curriculum product range. Jill McGuire, Director of Digital Product Development at Jacaranda, put it plainly:
“Mettro for me are perhaps the best creative problem solving agency I have worked with. Whatever the problem is, they will solve it. Other agencies I have worked with, if it gets too hard they will say ‘we will have it done but we need X from you’. With Mettro, they really are very good at finding solutions to difficult problems, that’s absolute gold for our company.”
