RSA: 12 — Redesign
reEvaluate
“It’s one thing to set a goal. It’s another, however, when you get so caught up in the details that you neglect to review your progress. Reevaluation enables you to improve your aim to ensure you hit your target.”
― Susan C. Young
We had some time to remove ourselves from the project over Christmas and return with a fresh mind.
When we logged back on in the New Year we felt as though something was not right. We had spent a lot of time refining Emmas character and the positive responses we got from our testing validated she fit the task.
"You guys got it. Im really impressed, it wasnt even like it was a computer. It was like you were talking to a real person, a kind, supporting person”
— Survivor
The issue we were having is where Emma lived. Its so common now days for new apps to be developed for anything and everything. As UX designers we fell into the trap of assuming that was the best place she could live.
reFocus
“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.”— Buckminster Fuller
We decided to look at the MVP (minimum viable product) and re-evalutated if an app would be the best solution.
A minimum viable product is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development.
The key words we identified in our brief was seamless and cost effective.
How might we design systems that provide seamless and cost-effective access to quality health services for underserved communities?
Something that is seamless is smooth and continuous, with no apparent gaps or spaces between one part and the next.
The most difficult part about working with Survivors of Sex Trafficking is that fact they have lost faith in humanity as a result of trauma and abuse. Therefore they find it very difficult to trust anyone or anything. We needed Emma to build trust with these women in order to help them.
“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
— Jakob’s Law
We decided to leverage what we knew about Jakob’s Law and utilise technology that is already familiar to these women.
From our research we learned that most women who have some access to technology while being trafficked have access or have had access to social media. These are familiar with platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.
We had built Emma keeping in mind that we would like her to be able to exist across platforms. If her main content base was in a website it would be easier to access in a small amount of time and also would not ask the women to download any app they are not yet familiar with.
reDevelop
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
— Pablo Picasso
The next step was to redesign how a user would interact with Emma on a webpage.
We had already designed content, conversation flow, Emmas tone and her approach so all we had to do was rearrange the information and interactions.
We used squarespace.com for our main website page as it has a very solid structure and is easy to inject content into a clean minimal design.
We created our chat flow using manychat.com as it allowed us to incorporate Facebook messenger into the website giving a very realistic experience prototype.
Filling in the Blanks
Once we had Emma’s framework running smoothly we began to fill in the gaps in her courses, homepage and connections. We were aware that we would not have the capability to fully flesh out Emma’s courses or homepage as we lacked years of experience working with women who experience high levels of trauma related symptoms.
Instead we demonstrated how the user would be given complex information in an accessible way.
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
— Frederic Chopin
We knew from our research that in Ireland, many survivors of sex trafficking have limited English and literacy levels that are equivalent to a 13 year old child. Since all of the text on our website has the option of being multilingual we wanted to make a point of having content that is easily consumed by those who have difficulty reading.
“Visual process doesn’t just assist in the perception of our world. It dominates the perception of our world.”
— John Medina
For our three courses we made a short animated video describing what the course would contain. We ensured our videos were short and informative, kept the same soothing colours and ensured any movement was minimal as we were aware many of our users would suffer from hyper vigilance.
For the homepage we took a sample of articles that would be related to our persona symptoms, for example ‘Overcoming Addictions’ and ‘How to Practice being Mindful’. This content would be updated as the user moves along her journey to facilitate her healing.
For the introduction to Therapist we hired two wonderful actresses to play ‘Dot’ and ‘Melina’.
The idea behind these videos is once again to encourage the survivor to trust Emma and the person Emma will connect her to. If she can see a video of the Therapist and Advocate introduce themselves prior to meeting it can help ease anxieties and feel more comfortable about the connection.
Cherry on Top
Form follows function-that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
— Frank Lloyd
In our eyes no concept is complete until we can hand it over to a development team and walk away with the confidence knowing they will encapsulate our months of hard work in a finished piece.
To ensure the intentions, tone, functions and overall feel of Emma can be created exactly how we envisioned we created a style guide that not only tells the reader how to bring Emma to life, but it also tells them why each detail is important to our user.
You can view our style guide here: https://emma.frontify.com/d/HJURoTEcGng8
Thank you for reading !
*Dramatically logs off and closes laptop with a sigh*
