Vesta Social Information Technologies
Eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace by providing a secure reporting platform
for employees and employers.
OVERVIEW
Vesta is a social enterprise aiming to provide a safe space for those who have experienced sexual harassment. Their mission is to create a secure and trusted web platform that will support individuals’ pathways to justice. The aim of this project was to redesign the Vesta website aiming towards sexual harassment in workplaces.
PROJECT SCOPE
Creating an informative, credible and trustworthy website that will engage the users and inform them about a web app, that will streamline the sexual harassment reporting process in the workplace.
RESEARCH
After doing interviews, surveys and analyzing the data we were able to categorize the information in three themes.
INSIGHTS
We mainly interviewed employees and employers since they were the main users of our product.
After understanding the users' approach to sexual harassment in the workplace and assessing the challenges that Jenny and Jessica face, we determined a challenge
statement for us to tackle in the three-weeks.
CHALLENGE
How might we build a website that is informative as well as safe and secure for the employees and employers so that they can comfortably report sexual harassment issues on it?
Jessica and Jenny's stories were informed by the insights gathered from the research. They represent the target users for Vesta and guided us throughout the design phase.
PLANNING
After thorough research, we found opportunities to minimize the frustrations for both Jessica and Jenny. The solutions we came up with were in line with the mission and vision of Vesta. We designed a website that would enable them to;
engage with the website and find resources to address the legal side of things as well what happens once an issue has been reported and how to deal with it
feel safe and trust the platform with their information
MARKET RESEARCH
For Vesta, clear information and security were the most important objectives, we used these as metrics to do our competitive analysis. We looked at some direct and indirect competitors of Vesta and determined which of them appear as secure and have clear information and how we can make Vesta better than them.
DESIGNING
The Visual Structure
Sketches were created on pen and paper initially to iterate quickly to visually determine the user flow which were then digitized into mid-fidelity wireframes for the first session of user testing.
PERSONALITY &
STYLE TILE
The purpose of Vesta is to provide a safe digital space where individuals can have a sense of support and guidance. Hence, we wanted to keep the colors warm, neutral and formal.
MID TO HIGH
FIDELITY
The home page was designed in a way that first-time users got to understand the vision behind the product followed by some statistics immediately to reinforce the facts of sexual harassment in the workplace.
This was followed by the solution; a safe online reporting platform that is strictly confidential and private, backed by customer testimonials for more credibility.
The about us page again backs up our commitment to our users by our statement to ‘eliminate sexual harassment’ in workplaces. This is followed by our vision and mission statement which is to provide a safe space for users to tell their personal yet private story.
We added a call to action ‘book a demo’ of the future web platform reporting system. Moreover, we added a ‘what we offer’ page to bring home the selling features of Vesta.
Finally, to make the website resourceful we added a ‘resources page’ with two sections, one for the employer and the other for the employee.
To validate our solution, we tested the prototype with 7 potentials users of Vesta. We received good feedback mostly, however, there were some minor fixes.
USER TESTING
-
Website is pretty simple and easy to navigate — This was positive feedback. We were happy that the users found the website simple and straight-forward.
-
Not sure if the platform will be secure or if the data is confidential — This was an easy fix. We added the most features (privacy, security, confidentiality, etc) at the beginning of the ‘what we offer’ page.
-
How it works should be more detailed — We created two different sections in ‘how it works’, one for the employee and one for the employer and made it as detailed as possible while remaining to the point and simple.
Future Considerations
-
To create a good impact Vesta should hire a copywriter to create impactful copy for the website. The clear and meaningful language would be very crucial to get the message across.
-
Vesta should have its own curated content for employees and employers instead of external links and content.
-
Also, Vesta should have a Login/Sign-up call to action once the web platform will be developed.