Jax Wechsler

Design Research for FACS

Videos

My academic research points to the valuable role research derived video artefacts can play in supporting human-centred organisational change. Video artefacts are accessible and engaging and get shared organically within the business.

For FACS, I conducted several interviews with young people, FACS workers and carers in order to understand challenges when working with children in out of home care. Some of this data was turned into video and audio assets which was shared with the project team to facilitate empathy. Below is an example video of a carer.

Digital Ethnography

I conducted a diary study for Family and Community Services (FACS) employees to better understand the work practices of FACS child protection case workers. This work contributes to the NSW’s government Safe Home for Life program. This work contributes to the ChildStory initiative which is focused on IT system redesign.

Using a password protected WordPress blog, participants emailed their responses to the diary study tasks. These activities are designed to help us understand the pain-points FACS workers experienced in their day so that we could better design technology that supports their work practices. An example activity is getting participants to send in photos or text describing three things that made them smile at work that day, and three things that turned their smile upside down. They simply email their responses and using a WordPress plugin the activity is assigned to their role. This approach allows us to filter responses by tasks and role, bringing the design team an empathic understanding of user challenges and their contexts.

The data from these activities was triangulated with data generated from interviews, one on one shadowing and work-shops to inform the tender document.

 

Thank you for sharing this video Jax – heart warming. I can certainly see the importance of capturing the child’s ‘story’ for them to look back on. Megan Neale, Regional Project Manager, Western Sydney
 

© 2024 Jax Wechsler