Survive & Thrive
Who: Survive & Thrive
When: Winter 2019
Where: Melbourne
Solution: Design Work / Squarespace Website
Status: In progress – Unfortunately this project has been affected by Covid-19
The problem:
8 years ago, just after Christmas, Snezana woke early in the morning to find her house on fire. Unable to save it, despite the efforts of the MFB, she found herself not two weeks after Christmas standing on an empty block of land, having lost everything that she knew and that resembled her family’s life.
Like all families and individuals who go through the trauma of losing a house to fire, there are not only a million things that need to be worked through - Insurance, demolition, accommodation, coordinating with Council, utilities, transport - but also a whirlwind of emotions and painful stages of recovery.
What stood out as a massive hole to Snezana and her friend and colleague Meg, is that there is very little currently to support survivors of fire once the firefighters put out the fire and move on. It’s very much left to the individual to find out what they need to do physically and practically, but also to begin to put themselves back together emotionally and mentally. And this can go on for months and years for everyone involved.
Design Work & Squarespace Website:
The goal of the 2019 Melbourne Winter Hack (July) was to design an online resource for users that mapped and presented their existing content, and to create a basic visual identity for the charity. These would be used to communicating their vision to the council and other stakeholders in the coming weeks, as well as being a strong design foundation to start building the finished product.
The team achieved these goals by employing various design methods, including:
Mapping the User Experience.
Organising existing content and mapping out a more effective information flow.
Developing a visual identity by creating logos, developing colour schemes for the website and other brand materials.
Prototype Wordpress and Squarespace websites.
Over the next few months the team continued to RHoLL and work on various aspects of the project.
At the 2019 Melbourne Summer RHoLL (December) the who team came together to review and refine the website; incorporating new content and images, reviewing the user experience, and making the resource more mobile friendly. The website was published and a comprehensive plan was developed for the next phase of the project – user testing and research.