TOMORROW

App for domestic violence survivors to share experiences and connect with professional help

As part of my class “Ideation & Prototyping”, we worked with a community-based organization for women – WomenRising on providing them with design solution to better help domestic violence survivors. 

TOOLS USED

Figma

Adobe Creative Suite

TEAM MEMBERS

Ao/ Ashley/ Beiheng/ Qiran/ Jun

 

TIMELINE

Nov 2021 – Dec 2021

MY ROLE

UX Research: Interview, Survey, Competitive Analysis,  Diary Study, Persona, Site Visit, Feature Prioritization, and Design Direction.

UX Design: User Flow, Prototyping in Figma.

THE PROBLEM

Domestic violence can cause many effects, it would cause body and mental injury for survivors, destroy a family, cause a higher crime rate in the community, take a toll on children’s growth.

WomenRising is a community-based organization that was founded in 1905. The organization has been helping women and their families with domestic violence.WomenRising wants to build a mobile app platform for connecting survivors with NPOs to provide in-time help for survivors. They only have a website and usually contact survivors via e-mail or phone calls or in-person, which may cause danger to counselors working in the organization once the abuser knows survivors are contacting the organization. They need to digitalize the way to connect and help survivors safely and confidentially.

How might we create a platform for survivors to seek professional help and share experiences confidentially?

 

 

SOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      Protect Users’ Safety

  • Disguised as a calendar app. If someone enters the wrong password many times, it will automatically open as a calendar app to ensure the safety of the survivor.
  • Provides multiple language options to ensure accessibility for people of different languages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

    Professional Articles

    and Community Support

  • Experts can publish professional articles to provide help.
  • Survivors can share their stories, experiences, and feelings in the forum to gain community support.
  • Completely anonymous to protect the privacy of survivors.

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

     Connect with Organizations

     and Professionals

  • Users can find various forms of help.
  • By directly connecting survivors and nearby organizations, survivors can submit forms to make appointments for counselors or support groups (with one expert and several survivors).
  • Find shelters, daycare centers, work opportunities through organizations. 

APPROACH

01

Define

Understand problem space
Define design goals
Expected methods

02

Research

Persona
Journey mapping
Affinity Mapping
Card Sorting
User Interview
Survey
Diary Study
Netnography

03

Design

Design solutions
Sketches
Wireframes
Prototype

04

Evaluate

Expert Evaluation
User Testing

RESEARCH

We divided our research into 2 phases:

Primary Research: we conducted stakeholder interviews, survey, diary study, netnography and site visit to better understand the context of the problem.

Secondary Research: we audited existing solutions, had literature review.

After research, we concluded all of the data into an affinity map that helped us build personas, empathy maps, journey maps, and design solutions.

Literature Review

Understanding the definition, causes and effects of domestic violence

User Interview(3)

Understanding user needs and pain points

Survey(3)

Gather users’ opinions and feelings

Site Visit

observe counselors in organization’s work task and environment

Diary Study

Collect qualitative data about user behaviors, activities, experiences over time

Competitive Analysis

Analize the problem space and current solutions

Netnography

Gather user data in a less intrusive way

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

We analyzed 4 direct competitors as shown below, who are important domestic violence, help providers. 

The main features in these apps are educational information and help to identify domestic violence for those who don’t know they are in danger. 

They lack psychological help resources and organization resources nearby to provide help and services, which is what we are going to focus on.

 

RESEARCH PROCESS

We did the interview, survey, netnography and analyzed the definition, causes, effects, and existing ways to protect survivors. Here is the link to the research details if you want to know more about the research process:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nltCovSCEFD3fnrQLJqoQsoeXh9-kHe61hFVQ0oE9bY/edit?usp=sharing

Survey questions:

https://forms.gle/JkKaWmu9jyUuN9UX9

A small excerpt from the research process: Diary Study

According to the diary, we observed that the survivor visited hospitals frequently after domestic violence. Both for mental and physical health. When they are isolated, they would desperately find people to talk to (both online and offline).

They suffered from insomnia, headache, desperation, feeling hopeless .etc. They need help and sometimes they don’t know how to leave this situation and they can’t decide whether to end the dangerous relationship.

Here are some diaries that we collected during research:

PERSONA & EMPATHY MAP

After research, we created two personas and empathy maps based on the findings in the research to help team members understand who are our targeted users and what their needs, goals, motivations, pain points are. To be short, our target users are mainly 16~40 years old women who located in New York and nearby areas suffering from any kind of domestic violence.

RESEARCH SYNTHESIS & AFFINITY MAP

According to our findings, we created an affinity map to synthesize and categorize all the insights and design opportunities. 

We found that users need emotional support, urgent rescue services, experts to talk with, being independent to avoid repetitive DV, and shelters.

So we decided that we will mainly focus on the following aspects:

  • Raising awareness of domestic violence.
  • Helping reduce stress and psychological issues.
  • Providing services from organizations.
  • Seeking help in time.
  • Connecting organizations, counselors with survivors.

DIRECTION

We prioritized the main 5 features and created a flow to clarify the design opportunities, including multi-language service, emergency calls, support group and counseling, general education, shelter, and childcare.

JOURNEY MAPPING

With the features in mind, we created a journey map that shows how a user seeks help from being in danger to realizing they are under domestic violence, to finding resources and help, to getting rid of DV, and to having a better life.

USER FLOW

DESIGN

Designs and prototypes were all made on Figma after accessibility testing.

Here is a clickable prototype:

NEXT STEP

For our next steps, we are going to:

1. conduct usability testings to receive user feedbacks.

2. iterate our design.

3. collect advice from professionals.

This is the end of the case study. Thank you for your reading!  🙂