A Good Life

People who have complex support needs often don’t have the opportunity to make choices about their lives that most people take for granted. Instead, these decisions are made for them by the people responsible for their care: support workers, risk assessors, plan managers and policy makers. These decision makers face a range of complex and competing challenges: increased demand for services, a lack of funding, complex regulations and staff shortages. Too often, this leads to a focus on these pressing administrative concerns at the expense of the lived experience and quality of life of the people who rely on support.

A Good Life is an interactive web-based tool for creating and sharing visualisations of a person’s life. It is the result of almost two years of in-depth design research and development working with people with disabilities and support providers. The tool provides a rich and clear understanding of a person’s lived experience and allows users to better understand the balance between cost, complexity, risk and quality of life. A Good Life allows advocates and decision makers to explore how a person’s life could become richer and more rewarding by changing the way that support is provided.

A Good Life is designed for social impact at several levels: improving quality of life for people who rely on support services, training support teams to provide high quality, person-centred support, advocating for policy reform and driving cultural change. The tool is designed for people with disabilities, but can be adapted to a wide range of contexts where complex decisions are made on behalf of other people, such as aged care, health and education. The project also demonstrates the powerful role that design can play in tackling complex social issues, equipping people with the knowledge to make meaningful change.

A Good Life is a powerful demonstration of the value of taking an open, exploratory approach to design. The initial ‘brief’ for the project was to map the landscape of disability support for people with complex support needs. This open-ended goal led to a deep and creative process of visual exploration and critical reflection. Working closely with people with personal and professional experience of disability support was critical to shaping these early explorations into a powerful and practical interactive tool that vastly exceeded the project team’s initial goals. The complementary knowledge and skills of the project team was fundamental to the success of the project. The collaboration between design practitioners, design researchers and domain experts allowed the team to design an intuitive and easy to use tool that responds to the complex and multifaceted context of disability support. Defining clear design principles was also critical to the success of the project. At the outset, the project team developed a set of core tenets that would guide the design process. These included centering people with disabilities, adopting the principles of active support, respecting the knowledge and experience of support professionals, designing with humility and welcoming collaborators into the design process.