WISE WOMEN
The Brief
Design a digital version of Wise Women’s monitoring form. Usually women are asked to fill out the Wise Women monitoring form after taking one of their personal safety classes or courses, and Wise Women are looking for a more convenient way to collect the information. The monitoring form is used to collect statistics and stories from real women in Glasgow. The solution should also share these statistics and stories to allow other women to read them, as reading others experiences can encourage women to come forward and know they’re not alone.
More Info
This was an active brief from the charity organisation Wise Women, who work against violence against women in Glasgow. They also offer safety courses and classes for women. This was a 6 week long group project in collaboration with 2 other designers. My role within the group was mainly prototyping and designing the stats and stories page layouts, but all 3 of us collaborated and assisted each other throughout the entire project.
Programs used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Invision, Invision Studio
Development
This is a video explaining who Wise Women are and what they do, and also gives an insight into our design process at the beginning of our project. As a group, we met up with and worked with the client throughout the brief to ensure we were meeting their expectations and covering all of the needs of the brief.
We quickly decided that a mobile app would not be the best solution due to the nature of the monitoring form. Women who are filling this form out may be in unsafe situations or households, and they may have limited phone usage or have their usage monitored. It was for these reasons a smartphone application was ruled out. We decided instead to design a microsite/ additional page of the existing Wise Women website that could be discreet and safer for at risk women to use.
Wise Women Client Presentation
We narrowed the brief down to three objectives: (1) to share women’s experiences about abuse, harassment and sexual violence, (2) to raise awareness of these issues, and (3) to include an online monitoring form for women to report anonymously.
After some brainstorming, we split the features into 2 sections on the site, stats & stories which would include quotes and stories from real women in Glasgow, as well as statistics from the information gathered from the monitoring form...
...and an online monitoring form. The form is where Wise Women could gather stats and information, and also signpost women to the right organisations to help them.
We also created a Google form as an option for the client, so that it can be implemented right away, or if the client could not get the resources to have our designs developed. Wise Women is a charity, so we had to keep their limited budget and resources in mind. Our designs would be more functional and would have a better user experience, but the google form would be easy for the client to implement and could be used in the meantime.
To start figuring out the visual style we did some research into other charities that deal with similar issues, as well as some other visual styles. We already had the existing Wise Women logo and colour scheme, and wanted our pages to fit in with the existing website for a cohesive user experience.
We then created wireframes, using the site map and hierarchy set out by our initial design process. We tried a few different layouts but this was the design we went with, as it had the best functionality for what we needed. Wise Women wanted us to target a younger audience, that’s one of the reasons why we started the design process with mobile screen sizes. We used the header and footer from the existing Wise Women website for a more cohesive design.
This is our style guide. We kept with the colour scheme, font and style of the existing site, while also adding our own graphics and illustrations. Due to working on such a sensitive topic, we experienced some challenges along the way. We chose our icons and language very carefully, for example: we decided to rule out check marks, because they usually have positive connotations and are not appropriate when asking people about traumatic experiences.
These are a few of the graphics we used to display the statistics and quotes from women in Glasgow.
Final mobile pages layout. We placed a call to action button at the top and the bottom of the page to take the user to the monitoring form. This was so that users can quickly access the monitoring form if they have limited time, or can access the form after reading other women's stories. After filling out the form, users are taken to the signposting page where they can visit other helpful organisations, and also the workshops and courses offered by Wise Women.
We also made a desktop layout, however we see the mobile layout being used more because of our target audience. Women filling it out at the end of classes, or filling it out discreetly will probably find the mobile layout easier to access, but the desktop layout is available when needed.
Final mobile pages for the form. We designed it in a way that meant users would not have to go through questions abut every single form of abuse. Users only answer questions on whichever forms of abuse they click on. We also included a short description of each category of abuse, which we believe can help users differentiate between the different kinds of abuse.
Final page layouts for the form's desktop version.
These are what we thought could be taken on in future, to develop the project further. Wise Women have looked into getting funding to develop our designs, but have not yet done so. A social media campaign would promote Wise Women, and encourage more women to fill out the form and read other women's stories.
Final Design Outcomes
The functioning pages in the prototype are:
• Stats & Stories
• Sexual Assault
• The Monitoring Form
• Signposting