charity

It is estimated that around 3 million women across the UK experience either rape, domestic violence, forced marriage, stalking, sexual exploitation, trafficking or other forms of violence every year. This is the equivalent to the population of Wales. Welsh Women’s Aid has been at the forefront of shaping coordinated community responses and practices in Wales since being established in 1978.

brief

Welsh Women’s Aid approached rule:fresh with the aim of creating a Progressive Web App (PWA) for their Tools For Change initiative. Tools For Change is a new strengths-based, needs-led approach that supports survivors of all forms of violence against women, and their children, to build resilience, ultimately leading to independence.

Historically the charity has used monthly questionnaires and reporting to gather information from their amazing supporters, but wanted a way to combine those functions into a single easy to use application. The app needed to work on Android, iOS and Windows platforms with a tight budget so developing native applications was out of the question (due to the amount of work involved in such an undertaking), so a PWA was seen as a great low cost alternative which works on all platforms.

process

Speaking to Welsh Women’s Aid gave us a clear idea of the key audiences within the Tools For Change project and how best to engage them within the new PWA. We created working wireframes so the client could fully understand how both the end users and the administrator would interact with the app, and over the course of a few weeks refined the design with the addition of some new features.

We followed the branding of Welsh Women’s Aid using their bold Tools For Change colour scheme with the strong pink logos and text working excellently against the white backdrop of the app. The language used within the app is designed to make users feel welcomed and appreciated, and we also reflected this in the images we produced for the project.

solution

Welsh Women’s Aid now has an application that enables them to gather their monthly information without the need for staff members spending lots of valuable time administering the reporting. Instead a simple once a month log in to download the data into a spreadsheet is all that is needed to stay on top of things.

Additional data are also available in the form of customisable surveys, polls and more and enables the charity to take advantage of the easy reporting for their audiences. We also put in a moderated forum purely for the survivors of domestic abuse, so that they may easily find support and a safe place to talk.

Other sections of the PWA include an Advice & Tips section where the charity can post images, PDF’s and written guides along with an Events section which will notify users if they come within 10 miles of the event on the day it is being hosted. All aspects of the application are designed to support the various audiences in their own way, ultimately to make sure everyone is supported as well as possible.

Launched in June 2021, the app gives Welsh Women’s Aid a powerful platform to engage with their users and supporters moving forward well into the future.