As Portable’s Principal Design Strategist, I was tasked with travelling to all school community locations and was responsible for leading all school community engagements in close collaboration with the department’s contracted service designer. I was additionally responsible for presenting the progress of the project to the project steering committee in regular showcases. As the work progressed into a more ambitious set of deliverables than initially planned, I became a core author of the final contents in the materials.
My involvement ranged from direct community engagement to the creation of educational materials, significantly enhancing the program's reach and efficacy.
This project set a new benchmark for community-centred approaches to delivering educational resources in mental health, winning gold in the 2024 Gov Design awards.
This project highlighted the importance of community involvement in educational initiatives, especially those addressing mental health. It taught me the value of holistic educational approaches that include not just students but their entire support systems, providing tools that empower them to understand and manage anxiety effectively. Through this experience, I deepened my commitment to creating impactful educational programs that address real-world issues.
The Department initiated a project to address the increasing prevalence of anxiety among primary school students, which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project aimed to create a universal program that could equip primary school communities with the tools to understand and manage anxiety, particularly among young children.
Before our engagement, the Department conducted a comprehensive discovery phase to understand anxiety in primary school settings. Our engagement was built upon this groundwork, allowing us to tailor our approach to the nuances uncovered during the discovery phase.
The problem identified through the discovery phase of the project was that there is no shared understanding of anxiety among children, caregivers, and school staff, which is hindering efforts to manage this issue. The project aimed to fill this critical gap by developing a comprehensive suite of resources to support children, caregivers, and school staff to understand better and manage anxiety that was blocking learning.
The desired outcomes included developing materials to help build anxiety literacy, enhance resilience and empower students to co-regulate with supportive adults and self-regulate to manage their anxiety effectively.
Resources were developed to be used at school and home with the children's and supportive adults' participation.
The challenge being addressed was complex, stemming from the need to accommodate a wide range of audiences with differing needs and preferences, including diverse geographies and cultural and socio-economic backgrounds across the state.
Our team has extensive experience ensuring safe and ethical interactions in complex environments.
Our approach focused on combining the expertise of clinical and educational experts with the tacit wisdom discovered within each school community. We believe that the best solutions emerge in complex systems through experimentation and continuous learning, rather than through adherence to a rigid, preconceived plan.
To complement our established human-centred design methods, we embraced emergent practices that emphasised experimentation, learning, and adaptability while remaining sensitive to each unique context and situation we encountered.
Our top priority was the safety of all participants, and we implemented universal design principles in all our activities and outputs. We aimed to create safe and respectful environments where diverse voices could be heard without fear of harm.