PROJECT SUMMARY
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet and Domestic Violence Victoria were the key project stakeholders.
They commissioned research during a 2016 government and technology sponsored hackathon to analyse de-identified data sets to better understand and respond to the “faces” of family violence in the state of Victoria.
Domestic Violence is a leading cause of intimate partner violence in Australia. One quarter of woman in Australia have experienced at least one incident of family violence in Australia.
Our stakeholders requested that we examine the Family Violence Royal Commission Submissions and Recommendations Report (2016) in order to better understand factors that reduce family violence.
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
My responsibilities for this product development were as a; Project Manager, Product Designer, User Experience Designer, Information Architecture, Visual Design and Stakeholder Manager. During this project I collaborated with several software engineers and a data analyst.
PROJECT TOOLS
The tools and technologies that my team utilised during this user centred product design included;
For data visualisation, user research and visual design; QGIS, CartoDB, Propoto, Balsamic, Splunk, Premier Pro and Dataiku.
For data analysis and data visualisation; Excel, R, Python, Trifacta, Dataiki, Splunk and BlueMix IBM.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Live Safe is a responsive mobile application that incorporates unique features to educate and empower domestic violence victims and guide them to safety. Additionally it captures vital evidence of crimes to assist the legal process.
This project tells the story of our end user, Sally’s journey through a domestic violence situation. Victorian government de-identified data sets and Royal Commission into Family Violence Recommendations informed the design and development of a mobile application prototype.
This user centred design project, focussed on examining the causal factors of Family Violence within Victoria, from both legal reports and data based evidence.
These informed findings have allowed stake holders to gain an in depth understanding of key factors that drive the reduction of family violence incidents.
My role was to research, design, develop and test all user interfaces, product design & information architecture. Moreover, I collaborated with software engineers and data analysts to create this project.
Additionally, I presented and communicated the project findings to key government stakeholders, to solicit funding to develop the final prototype.
PROJECT SCOPE
The scope of this project was to develop a prototype of a mobile phone application, that was informed by user research and competitive analysis.
This evidence was derived from government data sets and Family Violence Royal Commission findings.
Out of scope - a fully functional mobile application. The initial prototype time frame was less than 48 hours. Further development was dependent on securing additional project funding.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The primary objective of this project was to analyse multiple datasets to predict trends and causal factors that contribute towards family violence in Australia.
The secondary objective was to create a clearer picture of the characteristics of people who experience family violence within Victoria. To better tailor support and funding initiatives towards this demographic.
Additionally objectives were to;
To visually deliver this research and underscore relevant factors, trends and recommendations into Victorian based family violence casual factors and solutions.
To gather audio visual evidence of crimes committed against end users for use in legal prosecutions against perpetrators.
To design and create a prototype of a mobile application that would benefit and educate domestic violence victims and their family’s, their local communities and first responders in the justice system.
To present informed findings to our stake holders, to assist them to gain a deeper understanding of key factors that actually influence and reduce family violence.
PROJECT SOLUTION
Our team have created a mobile application prototype that informs and educates domestic violence victims, their families, their local communities, charities and first responders.
This user centred design and data analysis project, focusses on examining the causal factors of Family Violence within Victoria, from empirical legal and data based evidence.
Informing our stake holders to gain an in depth understanding of key factors that drive the reduction of family violence incidents.
Cluster analysis, predictive modelling research and user centred research was undertaken to analyse this data. These outputs were visually depicted to highlight relevant factors, trends and recommendations in family violence issues.
This mobile application informs our target audience persona, Sally about Family Violence services and local community services support available to her and her family.
This mobile application assist victims of family violence to survive and live safer within their communities.
This prototype is based on key user data sourced from the following sources; crime statistics, weather bureau data, Family Violence Royal Commission Reports, spatial maps, gambling data, police database (de-identified) data, City of Melbourne data, news feeds, et al.
USER ANALYSIS & ASSUMPTIONS
Data Analysis was undertaken to determine the key factors that influence and contribute to family violence.
User centred design was adopted to create a key persona to intuitively resonate with our products target audience.
The persona, Sally, from Mildura, her dog Fido and her two children were on the run from an ice and alcohol affected, body builder partner. This persona was designed to emotionally impulse likeminded end users to engage and download the Live Safe application.
"As a typical domestic violence survivor I want to feel safer and educate myself about community support networks in order to protect myself and my family and reduce further incidents of family violence”.
Sally - Domestic Violence Victim
Our data research has informed the design considerations of the proposed solution - a working prototype of a mobile application, that educates and informs the end user.
It is assumed that both Sally and her perpetrator both have an active smart phone.
PROTOTYPE
The mobile application prototype was designed and developed with the following features;
- Audio Visual Evidence Capturing of incidents.
- Evidence depository
- Domestic violence incident alert functionality
- Location tracker.
- Accessibility requirements : WACG 2.0compatible.
Point of difference: the mobile application is disguised as a meditation application and is password protected. It is designed with a feminine look and feel. Discreet user interface does not reveal the applications true contents.
PROJECT CHALLENGES
During the design phase our team identified the following technical and legal challenges;
- How do we track our key persona Sally’s perpetrator, via GPS? What are the legal hurdles to achieve this?
- What are the privacy issues with both the victim and perpetrator utilising this service?
- Time consuming cleaning of messy data to cross correlate and wrangle data sets.
- Financial constraints as the technology services were provided by our sponsors, however our teams personal time developing the project was self funded.
IMPACT
This was a highly successful project that effectively communicated our projects research and findings to our stakeholders.
Our research informed some domestic violence and police agencies across Australia and the USA to amend their policing strategies, to assist real rather than perceived family violence victims.
We designed strategies and a mobile application prototype to target the true causal factors of domestic violence.
Important actionable insights derived during this design project elicited the following facts about Victorian domestic violence victims, included as follows;
- The majority of domestic violence victims were woman between 20 to 35 years old.
- A robust correlation between family violence and single parented families.
- They are most likely to have children.
- They are highly likely to be suffering from mortgage stress and financial stress.
- Family violence incidents are wide spread in Victoria.
- The top five areas affected by family violence in Victoria are regional centres; Latrobe, Mildura, Swan Hill, Benalla and Horsham.
- A noted strong correlation between family violence rates and alcohol and drug clients in any given LGA.
Also noted in the user research and testing stages that family violence victims;
- They are unwilling to leave domestic violence residential dwellings without their family pets.
- It was also observed that indigenous people living in Victoria are between eight and 31 times more likely to experience domestic violence, due to high rates of alcoholism, over crowded home dwellings and long term unemployment.
- Victorian Family violence trends have increased from 2011 onwards.
- A trend noted an increase in Intervention Orders for each year analysed.
- Court issued intervention orders have not reduced domestic violence incidents.
Our data analysis was presented to and generously shared with our government stakeholders, during 2016 which resulted in media campaigns and government narratives about domestic violence.
This process led to some organisations and unions advocating for people affected by family violence to receive paid leave, to assist them to move to a safer residential premise.
It also resulted in an increase in government funding to charities to better assist woman and children to leave unhealthy and violent relationships and move into a safer community.
Copyright Notice
Additionally, our mobile phone prototype was widely copied across the mobile phone market positive affecting change, setting an international benchmark as a robust mobile application solution for domestic violence victims.
The author requests that academic researchers, government department officials and writers kindly respect the copyright of my teams research.
And also respect the fact that this data analysis was successful at identifying all the key vectors of domestic violence, in part due to the fact that I personally invested five years of my unpaid time researching this topic, with the intention of publishing my findings on the important subject.
LEARNINGS
This design challenge also showed me that by mentoring and teaching my colleagues new skills to achieve project outcomes, results in positive results to achieve the desired project objectives.
KIM RISSON ACKNOWLEDGES THE TRADITIONAL FIRST NATIONS OWNERS OF THE LAND, WATERS AND SKY WHERE WE WORK, LIVE AND TRAVEL. WE PAY OUR RESPECTS TO ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER ELDERS, PAST, PRESENT AND EMERGING, THEIR COMMUNITIES, CULTURE AND TRADITIONS.