Rightfully yours
MyCreativeRights web design and development
We partnered with Copyright Licensing New Zealand to design and build MyCreativeRights—a digital platform that empowers creative kiwi’s. From strategy and research, to design and build, we delivered an inventive experience that helps creatives manage their work, understand copyright, and protect their mahi.
Empowering Creativity
As machine learning and AI-driven content generation become more advanced, the importance of provenance for creative practitioners has never been greater.
Copyright Licensing NZ (CLNZ) knew that many artists and authors were struggling to track and prove ownership of their work, making it difficult to enforce their rights. At the same time, there was a lack of accessible, clear information about copyright law and best practices.
We partnered with CLNZ to design and build MyCreativeRights—a digital platform that empowers New Zealand’s creative community.
MyCreativeRights helps artists, writers and other creatives manage their work, understand copyright law, and protect their intellectual property.
Defining the vision
CLNZ came to us knowing there was an opportunity to do right by their people, but needed our help to figure out where to start.
After some initial research, it was apparent that creative practitioners spent very little time managing the 'admin' around their creative works. We found that there was a real risk of creatives being unprepared and uneducated in the event that a copyright dispute should arise.
Together, we conceptually defined a vision for a suite of digital tools that could better support creatives. The first piece of that puzzle would be a trusted digital repository that could help creatives store and manage their work.
Our research suggested that the process could be daunting for our target customer, so we established guiding principles that would drive the next phase of work—usable, accessible, ethical and equitable.
Testing and learning
CLNZ knew that they needed to make sure they were building the right thing for their people, so we tested our concepts with more than 100 participants.
We started by conducting smaller group interviews with authors and artists, before moving on to wide spread task based research using our online focus group.
We learnt lots, and confirmed our suspicion that there was a real need for better digital copyright assistance.
We continued testing well after we had validated the concept. We knew how complex copyright law could be, so we wanted to make sure that we were making the process as simple and intuitive as possible.
This meant testing everything from navigation to process flows, and everything in between (including pricing models...). We were quite literally designing the product alongside its future customers. How cool!
Creative for the creatives
MyCreativeRights is a product for creative, people, so we knew that their creative nature would need to be reflected in the interface.
Inspired by the essence of creative endeavours, we developed a system of motifs using square, rectangular, and circular shapes—symbolising books, canvases, and the lens of a camera.
We created a modular grid system inspired by the cutting boards found in the studios of the photographers that made up part of our research participant pool.
The grid system gives the geometric shapes a way to nest on the canvas, while also giving the interface a way of scaling its content over multiple device sizes.
Interactive components further enhanced the experience, adding an element of playfulness to the interface.
Delivering on the vision
MyCreativeRights is an online portal that allows writers, artists and other creatives to record ownership of their work in case of a copyright dispute.
Creative practitioners can upload material relevant to the provenance of their work, including digital artefacts, contracts, and other documents. They can also choose to be reminded when certain key dates occur – such as contract expiry.
While uploading their work, creatives can enhance their content with details that are relevant to their rights, including creation and completion dates and other contributors to the work.
They are also encouraged to answer questions that allow the system to provide an initial assessment of the copyright status, and suggest reading material based on their choices.
Building with the future in mind
A critical part of the project was ensuring MyCreativeRights would be a scalable platform, capable of evolving alongside the needs of New Zealand’s creative community. By using a modular design and flexible backend architecture, we created a foundation that allows for future features—such as integrations with legal services, enhanced search functionality, and potential blockchain-based authentication of works (this is classic chat GPT making stuff up).
Our development team built MyCreativeRights from the ground up, ensuring that the platform was both high-performing and future-proof. Change to "The platform is powered by a fully integrated composable CMS enabling dynamic content management that allows CLNZ to update and refine information with ease.
For secure user authentication, we integrated Auth0, helping CLNZ establish a consistent user authorisation process across both new and existing products. The backend was designed with flexibility and efficiency in mind, ensuring seamless integrations, structured data management, and enterprise-grade security to support the long-term growth of the platform.
Effortless payments
We integrated Stripe for handling subscriptions and one-off payments. By leveraging Stripe’s secure payment processing, MyCreativeRights ensures that transactions are smooth, reliable, and compliant with industry standards. The integration also allows for automated invoicing and flexible pricing models, making it easier for CLNZ to manage user payments while maintaining a seamless experience for creatives.
Protecting creativity
MyCreativeRights is more than just a digital tool—it’s a step forward for the creative sector, providing creators with the resources they need to manage, protect, and prove ownership of their work.
With CLNZ leading the charge, this platform is setting a new benchmark for how we engage with copyright, ensuring we have the knowledge and confidence to navigate the world of intellectual property.
“An extremely useful, easy way to record the necessary details about the works we create. The simple interface offers a respite from what is usually a lengthy & laborious record-keeping process.”
Trinity Thompson-Browne
Visual Poet