Empowering people to undertake positive change with unwanted sexual experiences
The Request
The University of Melbourne wanted an interactive tool to provide support and empower students that have been involved in unhealthy relationships and sexual violence.
The Result
Avenue was proud to create an interactive web app that encourages and helps students decide on courses of action through education and access to appropriate services that allow them to take positive change in their current situation, or help others.
Funded by The University of Melbourne through its SSAF scheme (Student Services and Amenities Fee Grant), the MySafety web app is an interactive tool designed to provide support and empower students that have been involved in unhealthy relationships and sexual violence.
The University of Melbourne approached Avenue looking to create a digital solution to be used as the go-to resource for students who need support with sexual abuse.
Initiated by Associate Professor Laura Tarzia, the Deputy Lead of the Sexual Abuse and Family ViolencE program (SAFE) at the University of Melbourne, the project has the aim to support and empower students that have been victims of sexual assault and unhealthy relationships.
Tailored access making positive change
MySafety provides tailored access to information and helpful services on and off campus, allowing students (or anyone that accesses the app) to make positive change in their current situation, or to help others.
The application is specifically designed for students that have experienced abusive relationships, to be able to easily find information to support themselves, or others in need.
It achieves this through allowing users to follow a questionnaire that delivers a tailored action plan and encourages participants to act through the information and stories provided relating directly to their situation.
The app provides an engaging and interactive experience purposely designed to appeal and connect with the student population. A key mechanism implemented to achieve this was the commissioning of custom illustrations for use within the application. This imagery also focuses on inclusivity, to ensure a strong relationship with the full student community.
Unique user journeys
As every user has a unique experience with sexual or dating violence, to ensure users find the most relevant content to their scenario, the application was designed to output a tailored action plan based on their answers they provide to the questions and scenarios posed by the app.
Each question within the application has its own response mechanism that was optimised through user testing and research by specialists at the University of Melbourne.
Fast site speed
Fast loading websites are essential for user experience, with research showing that slow loading sites result in far less user engagement.
The reality for MySafety is that many people accessing it unfortunately have to do so in secret without others knowing. Hence speed is no longer an advantage, it’s essential. MySafety is blistering fast, recording 95 out of 100 in Google’s Page Speed tool, all whilst being visually rich and engaging.
Quick exit protection
Answers within the application are anonymous and to provide additional safety to people using it, the web app also includes a “Quick Exit” / panic button specifically designed to allow users to instantly leave the site at a moment’s notice should they need to quickly hide their use of it from an abusive partner.
As well as shutting down the MySafety site, this function instantly loads a ‘weather forecast’ website (to make it look like the user was viewing that site), plus deletes browsing history use of MySafety.
Privacy
Privacy was one of the key elements for the MySafety project, and accordingly, the web app has been designed to provide as much anonymity as possible for its users.
It does not collect any identifying information about the participants. Answers to the questions within the app cannot be linked to anyone personally. The site does not record user’s IP addresses or use cookies.
