About
For the first time since its creation in 1989, the Travis County Family Violence Task Force now has an online presence. This groundbreaking website consolidates fragmented resources into a survivor-focused platform, empowering domestic violence survivors to navigate protective orders, safety planning, and critical services.

I worked closely with stakeholders and survivors to design an easy to use website that provides step-by-step guidance and empathetic support, making sure survivors get the help they need.

Role
User Experience Designer
UX Researcher

Category
Web Design
UX Research
Service Design

Audience
Travis County Constituents & Domestic Violence Survivors
Travis County Attorney's Office & Law Library

Time Period
2022 - 2023

The Problems: Fragmented Information and Barriers to Help

Before the website redesign, survivors faced significant obstacles:

• Outdated Information: Resources were outdated, duplicated, and scattered across various departments.
  
• No Guidance: Existing pages lacked clear, step-by-step instructions, leaving survivors confused about how to get a protective order or create a safety plan.
  
• Barriers to Help: Confusion and frustration deterred survivors from seeking assistance.
  
• Fragmented Systems: Information was siloed across departments, making it difficult to provide seamless support.
  

The lack of a holistic, survivor-centered approach meant that survivors often felt unsupported, while government departments struggled to effectively serve the community.

Goals: Designing for Clarity, Support, and Collaboration

To address these issues, I developed How Might We (HMW) questions to guide the project:

• How might we create a holistic, end-to-end service experience for survivors?
• How might we support survivors with low digital skills in getting help online?
• How might we facilitate cross-departmental collaboration to transform services?
• How might we shift focus from isolated transactions to comprehensive services as users understand them?

These goals informed the website’s structure, content strategy, and design, making sure it met the needs of survivors and stakeholders alike.

Challenges: Building a Collaborative Foundation

This project introduced new ways of working across departments:

• Cross-Departmental Collaboration: Bringing different departments together for the first time to map out survivor needs and processes.
  
• Introducing UX Workshops: Engaging stakeholders in empathy and journey mapping workshops to identify pain points and define solutions.

Understanding Survivors’ Needs

Kick-Off Discovery Workshop

We started the project with a workshop to understand the real problems behind the request for a website. The goals were to learn more about the task force, clearly define the problems, and agree on next steps.

Activities:

1. Understanding the Audience:

• What do we know about survivors?
• What are their needs, interests, and characteristics (e.g., age, gender, living situation)?
• Why do survivors interact with the task force?
• Participants wrote their responses on sticky notes, which we grouped into themes.

2. Stakeholder Interviews:

• How does the task force currently engage with the public?
• What services and programs do they refer survivors to?
• What tools and resources do they share with survivors?

3. Assumptions Smash:

• We validated our assumptions about survivors and services by asking stakeholders for their input.

Mapping the Survivors' Journey

Here's a full view of the journey map as a spreadsheet. 

Protective Order Service Blueprint Workshop

We brought stakeholders from all the involved departments together in one room at the Travis County Civil and Family Courts Facility. The goal was to map out the protective order process from a survivor’s point of view, identifying steps, challenges, and emotions along the way.

Goals

• Extract knowledge about the protective order process.
  
• Consolidate insights from all departments.
• Align everyone on the problem and uncover gaps in services.

Activities

1. Empathy and Journey Mapping: We documented the survivor’s journey step-by-step, capturing their actions, mindset, and emotions from experiencing violence to obtaining a protective order. 
2. Service Blueprinting: We mapped how different departments contribute to the process, identifying inefficiencies and opportunities to improve.
   

Key Insights and Findings

• The Law Library and County Attorney's Office provide critical services for protective orders and safety planning.
  
• Stakeholders agreed that consolidating information into a single, user-friendly website was essential to support survivors effectively.
  

Design

Using our newly created page templates, the team identified the need for 11 new pages covering various topics and resources.

Usability Testing

Goals

Measure user satisfaction and ease of use of existing pages versus the prototype. Evaluate the effectiveness of guiding users through safety planning and obtaining protective orders. Determine if the prototype reduces task completion time.

Methodology

Unmoderated, qualitative usability comparison study using an interactive prototype and the existing website.

Tasks

• Participants were asked to find information on safety planning and protective orders, then rate their confidence and understanding of the processes.

What We Learned:

• Survivors found the step-by-step guides clear and helpful.
  
• Navigation improvements made it easier to find resources.
  

Compromises made:

• Stakeholders strongly advocated for a "Safety Exit" button on the website to help survivors quickly leave domestic violence-related content if needed.

• While testing showed that survivors didn’t use the button often, many said they felt reassured knowing it was there.
  

• Based on this feedback and stakeholder priorities, the "Safety Exit" button was included in the final design. It redirects users to the Google News website, though it does not clear their browser history.

The Results: A Big Step Forward

Achievements

• Increase in Page Views and Visitors:Protective Order page views increased from 1,064 to 12,102 and visitors from 693 to 9,855 in the past 12 months.
  
• Our team was even recognized by the Travis County Commissioners Court during domestic violence awareness month for our work!
  

Stakeholder Impact:

• Stakeholders can now effectively direct constituents to helpful resources and reference the start-to-finish process for obtaining protective orders.
  
• The website significantly improves the task force's capacity to support survivors and fulfill its mission to end the cycle of violence.
  

Lessons Learned

• Collaboration Works: Bringing departments together created a better solution for survivors.
  
• Empathy is Essential: Understanding survivors’ challenges helped us design something truly helpful.
  
• Testing is Key: Getting feedback from survivors ensured the website worked for their real needs.

This project showed how important it is to put people first when designing government services. By listening to survivors and working across departments, we created a website that helps people get the support they need during a difficult time.

The Travis County Digital and Web Services team getting recognized by the Travis County Commissioners Court during domestic violence awareness month for our work!