Home of Your Own wins a 2024 Social Impact Good Design Award
14 Oct 2024
Justice Connect’s newest, online self-help tool, Home of Your Own has won a Good Design Award in recognition of outstanding design and innovation.
Use Home of Your OwnThere are over 30,000 Victorians experiencing homelessness (up 24% in five years). Family violence continues to be a leading cause of homelessness for women and children, who represent 74% of people accessing homelessness services.
Legal, housing, financial, health, and social needs have increased in the cost-of-living and housing crises. This has placed many Victorian renters at risk of homelessness for the first time, while also compounding difficulties experienced by disadvantaged Victorians.
Victoria’s new rental laws are designed to protect renters facing family violence, but awareness of these protections is low, leaving many victim-survivors with the choice between staying in an unsafe home or fleeing into homelessness. Even family violence and community workers often have limited knowledge of these important protections.
To help more family violence victim-survivors access their rental rights, Justice Connect co-designed Home of Your Own which is a free, online self-help tool for Victorian renters facing family violence supporting them to take early, preventative action to safely avoid homelessness and the financial impacts of family violence. Home of Your Own also built on our 10 years of experiencing running the Women’s Homelessness Prevention Project which provides women with intensive legal and social work support.
Since its launch in May 2024, Home of Your Own has been used over 10,000 times by renters facing family violence. The tool has provided personalised documents for renters, tailored legal information and targeted pathways to additional support to help renters stay safely housed or avoid the financial burden caused by family violence when renting.
The Design Affect: Good Design Awards 2024
The 2024 Good Design Awards showcases the profound effects that exceptional design can have on individuals, communities, and the world.
The evaluation process focused on three core criteria: Good Design, Design Innovation, and Design Impact, ensuring that each winner demonstrated outstanding design quality and effectiveness. The Awards showcase the best in design, reaffirming design’s critical role in shaping a better, more sustainable future for businesses and society.
More than 80 distinguished Jurors, including designers, engineers, architects, and industry leaders, rigorously evaluated this year’s entries. The Good Design Jury commented about Home of Your Own:
“The Jury applauds the Home of Your Own initiative for its profound impact on at-risk renters across Victoria. This free, online self-help tool provides crucial support for those facing the threat of homelessness due to family violence, enabling them to take preventative action and avoid financial distress. The project exemplifies how good design can make a significant difference in the lives of vulnerable individuals. The Jury was particularly moved by the project’s ability to address such a pressing social issue with a thoughtful and accessible solution.
This is a prime example of how design can drive meaningful social change and provide invaluable support to those in need.”
Learn more about the Good Design AwardsHuman-centred research, design, and development
Sam Horman, Digital Innovation Lead in the Homeless Law team at Justice Connect, worked closely on the development Home of Your Own.
“We’re proud to have our digital tools recognised by the design community as well as the initial feedback we have received from people with lived experience of family violence and homelessness about the impact of the tool. We continue to measure our success by the stories and numbers of people who tell us that using one of our tools helped them to stay housed, prevented a legal problem, access services, or helped them to act and advocate for themselves,” they reflect.
Home of Your Own’s homepage and question flow
At each design stage, Justice Connect collaborated with people who have experienced family violence and homelessness, embedding our learnings from survivor-advocates through iterative designs to develop the tool. To ensure Home of Your Own was fit for purpose, we extensively tested the language, navigation, and imagery to ensure renters affected by family violence felt confident in using the tool and able to take action. The tool also incorporates safety and privacy features, such as a quick exit button and instructions to assist private and secure browsing.
Early feedback from users has indicated the benefit of the accessibility of the tool: “So many nights I slept in the car and I didn’t know there were services who could help. If I had an app or information I could access on my phone that would’ve helped.”
As part of the design process, we also integrated Home of Your Own with our existing self-help tool, Dear Landlord, which has helped 120,000 renters avoid eviction since COVID started.
“To us, good design also means approaching our work with an experimental mindset, so we will continue to measure, improve, adapt and share our work in response to community feedback and the data we have.” Sam says.
We remain committed to continuously improving our self-help tools through our rigorous measurement, evaluation and learning mechanisms, particularly related to user feedback and outcomes. Qualitative and quantitative insights will also help us gather and share evidence for systemic changes for people facing housing and financial insecurity due to family violence.
Visit Home of Your OwnJustice Connect acknowledges the ERDI Foundation, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation and the Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner for their support of Home of Your Own, making it possible for us to keep more women and children safely housed across Victoria. We also thank the women with lived experience of family violence and homelessness, as well as the frontline community workers, who shared their insights and contributed to the creation of this tool.
