This document summarizes an advocacy project aimed at increasing transparency between the Victorian government and citizens regarding violence prevention efforts. It discusses conducting research through interviews to understand citizen needs, which included transparency, accountability, and a way to provide input. It then proposes creating a online platform to facilitate conversations between government and citizens to increase understanding of the gender-based budget strategy by 50% over 24 months. Key elements of the proposed platform include providing budget and expense details, project outcomes and stories, events, and a forum for discussion and feedback. Next steps involve user testing of the prototype and further developing the virtual support network concept.

1. The
Empathy
Project
How advocacy of violence prevention
can be achieved by addressing the disconnect
between the Victorian government & people
Lin Min Jung, Trish Kelly and Elaine Tan

2. Challenge 2.
Equity and Equality:
Health, Gender, Labor,
Education
Find ways to use budget (and other) datasets to explore the budget
through the lens of gender

3. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/d
esign-thinking/
Our
Approach

4. Discovery
● Understanding the Budget
● Comparative Analysis
● User Interviews
To understand what it is that people need,
we conducted our research with the purpose
to empathise and understand

5. $3.1 billion
Annual cost of family violence in Victoria in 2014-15

6. $50.7 million
To launch Free from Violence: Victoria’s strategy
to prevent family violence and all forms of
violence against women
227
The number of recommendations
made by the Royal Commission to advocate for
violence prevention

7. How much do Victorians know about the government’s effort
for violence prevention?

8. What do people need?
Transparency // Accountability

9. Problem
Victorian citizens need transparency
on the Free from Violence strategy in the Victorian Budget 17/18
and understanding of its implementation
because they want assurance that it would bring
positive implications on prevention of gender-based and family violence

10. How might we
create better public understanding on the benefits of
the gender-based budget strategy?

11. Hypothesis
We believe that by creating a safe environment to facilitate the
conversation between the state government and people, we can bridge
the current disconnect and perceived lack of transparency in the Budget.
We will know this to be true when public understanding on the
gender-based budget strategy is increased by 50% in the next 24 months.
A key metric of measurement is via surveys on Victorian residents.

12. Design
To conceptualise our ideas,
we utilised Design Thinking techniques
that brought our solution to life
● Persona
● Storyboard
● Design Studios

13. Persona: Shaun
Frustrations Needs
1. Reading through the
content-heavy budget and
trying to sieve through
information that interests him
2. Being unable to easily access
the information that he needs
3. Not having a direct
conversation to help advocate
for violence prevention
1. Have his questions and
doubts on budget allocation
for violence prevention
answered
2. Platform to voice his
suggestions
3. Meet like-minded individuals
for cross-pollination of ideas
on violence prevention
Shaun, 35
Business Analyst at Bupa

14. Storyboard

15. Ideation

16. Prototype
To validate our concepts,
we created representation of our
collective ideas

17. Project Page
● Last updated date
● Share & Follow the project
● Budget plans & Expense
● Project outcome
● Events
● Forum

18. Budget
Expense
● Users can see how
facilitators spent the budget

19. Outcome
● Users can see the outcome
of the plans
● Real stories related to the
project

20. Events
● Info of events related to the
project
● Enable people to get register
those events

21. Forum
● Enable users to see other
people’s opinions related to
the project
● Enable users to leave
feedback beneath others’
posts
● Admin can answer user’s
questions
● Latest & Popular posts

22. Write a
New Post

23. Next Steps
Conduct user testing on our prototype
Explore feature of a virtual support network/system accessible 24/7
Run a desirability, feasibility and viability assessment