Health Justice Australia – Knowledge Hub

People rarely experience problems in neat ways, and a person may be held in disadvantage by complex, intersecting needs. When left unaddressed, legal problems – like mouldy public housing – can lead to health and wellbeing issues – such as respiratory infections and anxiety. Yet our services are structured to address these issues as though they’re isolated and distinct. Through rigorous research, partnership and capacity building across sectors, and strategic advocacy work, Health Justice Australia (HJA) creates opportunities for systems change. With ambition to build the organisation as a knowledge hub, HJA needed a fresh digital presence to scale their impact.

Folk worked alongside the HJA team and their audiences to re-think and re-position the organisation as a ‘Knowledge Hub’. Redesigning their website was one part of a broader focus on service design, forming HJA’s ‘digital front door’. Folk supported HJA in defining their full ecosystem of offers, and the tools, processes and capabilities that enable service delivery. We spoke with practitioners, funders, and researchers to inform how best HJA could meet the needs of the sector and their audiences. Efforts were focused on clarifying what HJA does, who and how they help, through UX research, visual design, and content principles.

In working with HJA to establish, maintain, and scale the organisation as a knowledge hub, Folk helped build understanding in HJA’s work, and the broader impact of addressing system silos. Sector practitioners, funders, partners, researchers and thought-leaders can use HJA’s website and services to access evidence that supports service collaboration in funding applications. They can explore HJA’s training offers to build capacity, skills and partnerships. And they can advocate for reforms in policy settings, service design and funding. In these ways, HJA enables its audiences to better meet the needs of people experiencing multiple, intersecting health and legal needs.

Folk took a ground-up approach to understanding the organisation, speaking with internal and external stakeholders to dig into current perspectives of HJA and challenges across the health and legal sectors more broadly. This informed a clear picture of the diversity of services, offers, platforms and touchpoints surrounding HJA. As a complement to the qualitative research, Folk examined web analytics and online search behaviours of HJA’s diverse audiences. This gave a strong steer in terms of what people were looking for, both nationally and internationally. It also showed how well the HJA website was performing and where some of the biggest issues and opportunities were. Folk took a fresh look at the HJA brand and evolved the identity – to reflect organisation values, build trust, and bring simplicity to complexity. They worked closely with development partner Smokee to bring the brand to life through intentional interactions and a set of experience principles that reflect the insights from our research. Folk’s activities across the project included: •User and stakeholder research •Ecosystem mapping •Experience and journey mapping •Development of user archetypes •Defining an Information Architecture •Development of UX/UI design concepts •Development of content principles and governance •Evolving the brand identity