WAVE
  • Projects
  • ABOUT
Picture

YWCA Localized Domestic Violence Resource Development
​What is the best way to reach out to victims of domestic violence in the community?
PROJECT SUMMARY 
​This multi-semester project was given to us in a very open-ended manner, we were partnered with the YWCA of Greater Lafayette to identify a problem within their organization and create an appropriate solution for it. Because of this, my team and I spent a large amount of time researching the organization to identify issues to address. Eventually, we decided to work specifically with the Domestic Violence program of the YWCA because we found that the organization is struggling to reach out to victims of domestic violence or sexual assault in the Lafayette community. As a result, we created a platform that localizes local resources so that the community has an effective way to appropriately reach out and help domestic violence or sexual assault victims in the community.
​MY ROLE 
​For this project, my major contributions were in the final website design, user research, prototype development and usability testing. 
SOLUTION PREVIEW
At the end of this semester project, we provided the YWCA with a functional prototype of our design. Since this is a multi-semester project, the following semester, another team will be continuing this project with the organization. 
Picture

REFLECTION
This was my first UX project where I had to define my own problem to solve within a given context. It was an eye-opening learning experience to get to know the YWCA and their program in great depth in order to identify areas of opportunities. One of the biggest challenge of this experience is learning how to pivot. Originally, we were working on digitalizing paper works within the organization when we realized that the solution that they need already existed and there was no need to re-invent the wheel. This was when my team and I learned how to identify if a problem fits within our project scope and timeframe and what to do when it doesn't. In this project, I was also able to do a lot of contextual observation and learned a lot about the challenges that comes with it. Even though we did pivot during this project, we were able to recover quickly and move forward with it.

Working on this project taught me about UX but also what it means to work as a team. For this project, I was completely new to the UX process while one of my team member had prior experience so I learned a lot from her during this project. Even though this experience was intimidating at first, I was able to learn rapidly and became more confident. It was really nice to be a part of a team that communicated and cared about each other. 

DETAILED PROCESS
Picture

​
The image to the left represents the process that my team and I went through for this project. 

01 DISCOVER

At this stage, we wanted to gain knowledge of users and the context by conduct interviews to build user profiles on gathered data. 
​PRIMARY RESEARCH
For this part of our process, we wanted to learn about all aspects of the organization. 
Client Meetings 
First, we met up with the staff of YWCA to learn more about their internal processes and the organization. ​We quickly realized that many of the internal issues present in the organization were our of our scope and so we provided them with alternative methods to address those issues instead. 
Support Group Meetings​ 
After our insights from the client meetings, we decided to change directions and decided to explore YWCA's Domestic Violence program. We got permission from the YWCA to observe a Domestic Violence Support Group Meeting. Through this, we learned about the victim's situations and needs. However, we were not able to find an area that we could make an impact on.
YWCA Outreach Presentation 
Finally, we heard about the outreach presentations that the YWCA holds at various locations throughout the year to create awareness in the community. We attended this event to gain new perspectives and potential problem area. We were able to identify a couple of needs that we could potentially address with our project which are Children's Program and Central Resource (explained below)
PROBLEM SCOPING 
Through our primary research, we were able to narrow down our problem areas into 3 areas.
911 Cell Phones  
​
- Sponsor suggestion -
​A nationally recognized program where the YWCA hands out 911 cellphones to victims that allows them call for help faster. However, it is outdated and the up-keeping process of this is a big inconvenience to the organization.
​

"They are everywhere and clutter my office"
Children's Program 
There are limited offerings to help support children of domestic violence victims. The organization hopes to find more opportunities to grow in this area. 

​
"I wish we could do more for the children in these situations"
Central Resource 
The local understanding of available resources is very limited. The resources are very scattered and it is difficult to quickly gather all the information to seek support.  
​

"Finding a resource that has everything [the victims] need requires visiting multiple links"

Selected Problem: 
Central Resource


Considering the scale of the problem, time frame and our skills, we picked this problem to address. We felt that with this problem was the most realistic issue for our team to solve with the resources and time frame we had. 

PERSONAS
Apart from narrowing down the problem areas, the primary research also provided us with the information to create personas of our users.
Picture
YWCA Employee 
​
37 / Married, kids
" I want to help women get out of tough situations

​Goals
Creating safe environments, Helping others

Frustrations
Unsafe environment, Complicated processes at work, Workload
Picture
Recurring Victim 
​
43 / Widowed, kids
" I want to make sure my kids are safe when I am at work and have more resources to help me get back on my feet

​Goals
Have a stable income and creating a safe environment for her family

Frustrations
Lack of resources and not being able to find childcare services 
Picture
First Time Victim 
23 / In a relationship
​
" I'm not sure if this relationship is abusive or not but I feel like I deserve to be treated better. I want to know what options are available for me. 
​
​Goals
Re-evaluate relationship, Strengthening self-image

Frustrations
Helplessness, Fear of getting hurt
USER RESEARCH
We gathered 3 students for a 30 minute activity to help us gain a better understanding of the knowledge level, amount of time people spend to feel like they fully understand domestic violence and patterns while researching.
Background Survey
When they were asked to define domestic violence in the pre-use testing, all of the students mentioned the physical abuse aspect of it but only one talked about all the other types of abuse that is also considered a part of domestic violence.

We also asked the users to rate their level of knowledge about domestic violence. The results were they do not feel like they know a lot about domestic violence at all as none of them gave their knowledge level a rating over 5 out of 10. This is shown clearly from their ability to answer the first question. 
Task Completion
From the task completion assignments, we monitored the completion time, and the word and website choice.
​
Time
The average time spent on each question is only 52 seconds, which is very little to fully research a topic. This suggests that people don’t spend a lot of time when they read these information. 

Word and Website Choice
Most participants gravitated towards national resources or resources that weren’t listed such as the attorney's office rather than local resources.This suggests that the local resources still need to create a better image for themselves so that people will trust and reach out to them.
Survey
We wanted to know which resource the user would pick to contact. None of them look through several resources to evaluate and pick between them, they chose the first option that was available. 

When asked about content of the websites, the users felt that all of the websites had contents that made sense but they weren’t displayed in the most interesting way, they were just blocks of text with no visuals.

Some things that the participants used to consider when choosing between websites during the research are titles of the websites, reliability, domain name (i.e. ".gov”) and  keywords in the descriptions. 
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
​From there we wanted to find out what type of resources are available locally and nationally as well as what kind of efforts are being made to provide resources for victims of domestic violence. We mainly looked at 4 websites, two of them were national resources and the rest were local to the Lafayette/West Lafayette area. Here are the key insights for each of them. 
Picture
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence 
Stagnant safety exit button that takes the victims to Google when clicked on. There is content for all user groups and is the most visually pleasing out of the 4. 
Purdue University Police Department 
​
In-depth information for identifying abuse. The page is mainly focusing on only students. Even though it localized multiple resources on one page, the links are all broken.
Picture
Picture
YWCA of Greater Lafayette 
​
Emergency protocol for victims and has a list of support/services available from the YWCA. 

National Domestic Violence Hotline 
​
Safety Exit Button with a history populating feature. There is also a 24-Hour assistance and can be directly used by all potential user groups.
Picture

02 IDEATE

At this stage, we wanted to see what kind of ideas we have to address the problem space. We started out by sketching our ideas about how the platform might look like. 
SKETCHES
After gathering all the information needed to move on to the design stage, we met with our client to make sure we had all the important information for the website. From there, all of the team member sketched up multiple designs and used the best aspects of them to combine into one design.
Picture
Picture

03 EVALUATE

From there we wanted to evaluate if the design meets with the needs of the users and the sponsors. 
USABILITY TESTING
To see if the design meets the need of the users, we used our research on the users as well as information we got from the our sponsors to formulate questions and tasks for our participants to answer/complete using our platform.
​
Overall, the users were able to find the information they needed to find quickly and efficiently. However, we also noticed that users struggled with visibility of certain elements and did not understand the full capacity of the safety exit button. Each participant stated that they noticed this element but in the spur of their moment their first instinct was to hit the exit button in the browser. Other than lack of visibility the only real improvements that could be made was resizing elements to make them fit the resized content and creating a solution to the safety button recall.
​
DESIGN CHANGES
The insights from the usability tests led us to make the following changes to the final design. 

Full Page Sections Initially hard to differentiate between each section
Front Page Added Original design had unclear message of content
Color Changes More contrast between elements
Links Underline Differentiate between normal text and link
Footer Eliminated Unnecessary​


04 REFINE SOLUTION

Finalized website with design changes based on testing results. 
Picture

05 NEXT STEPS

Implementing Plug-ins 
To maximize the user experience in our website, implementing plug-ins would be beneficial. For example, installing a Google map plug-in in the local resource section would be helpful for users to point out the exact location of the local organization. Moreover, adding a national hotline plug-in would benefit users by giving them better options to reach out for emergency help.

Resource Filtering Option 
Add filtering options for users when browsing through the listed local resources. This would be an easy way for users to narrow down their options when searching through the resources.

Site Implementation/Back end Development
Implement and to host the website. After the website has its own domain and goes live, create strong back end development so when the facilitators try to make modifications to the website, it would not require them complex coding.

Responsive
Improve code so it would be responsive to a wide arrange of screen sizes from mobile to desktop.

For more information on this project
To read more about the project with YWCA of Greater Lafayette, please view our complete documentation here:
https://goo.gl/YVj67X

​View the final presentation given to the experience studio class and our stakeholder here:
​ https://goo.gl/RYHG25

Get In Touch!

Let's get to know each other. 
  • Projects
  • ABOUT