Sport is a big deal in Australia. So is consuming alcohol. Sometimes these two Aussie passions mix in ways they probably shouldn’t. Enter ‘Tip the Balance’ — an initiative set up to deal with alcohol and other drugs and their relationship to sport, from the amateur level right up to the elite. The program was set up by Sports Medicine Australia — Australia’s peak national umbrella body for sports medicine and sports science.

The psychologists involved with the program are a great bunch and regularly present to professional players and coaches from all types of sports.

Challenge

SMA needed a way of communicating a pretty dry and rather thick manual for the program into a more engaging form, across a different medium. To do this, the site had to achieve several seemingly conflicting goals:

  1. communicate the seriousness of alcohol abuse, while remaining fun and entertaining and;
  2. provide serious information to coaches, while also catering for young athletes viewing the site.

And of course, probably the largest challenge involved with this project was trying to educate an audience which wasn’t particularly keen on learning any more about the bad sides of alcohol abuse.

Solution

Through several meetings with psychologists and health experts involved with the project, together we pinpointed key areas which were most important and feasible to communicate through the site.

It was an exciting challenge to see if we could make boring audits and calculators come to life through a more interactive, tactile medium. The interfaces had to be bright, fast and able to be understood instantly. The site teaches athletes all kinds of things, from how to quickly calculate their blood alcohol level to helping alert them to potentially dangerous drinking patterns.

“It appeals to the players within the industry because it presents hard to sell concepts in a fun and engaging manner.”
Gayelene Clews
SMA Psychologist

In terms of colour, a ‘fresh’ and ‘energetic’ palette was chosen for the site to make it engaging and youthful. The content was broken up in a way to simultaneously accommodate both coaches’ and athletes’ differing points of interest. An oversized header provided a dynamic place to contain animations for the athletes’ area of the site. The coaches’ area allowed a more text-heavy content, whilst still remaining in keeping with the site’s overall theme.

Results

The completed site was presented and very well received at the International Society of Sport Psychology Conference in Sydney and has since been adopted by a number of sporting organisations. The future is bright for the program as planning is underway to expand it further to encompass school children, adolescents, and their teachers and parents.

NDAs mean I can’t show the Flash animations, so you’ll have to use your imagination with the screen shots on the right.

An interactive calculator that tells athletes how far they need to run to burn off different types of alcoholic drinks.

Animation about the effects of other drugs, including Cannabis, Ecstasy and Speed.

Animation showing the stages of intoxication. This is only stage two :)

Performance problems.

—Published 12 October, 2008

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