Project Overview
Young people are notoriously difficult to connect with especially when trying to provide them with legal information. A beautifully designed, user friendly app was the best choice Women’s Legal Service Tasmania could have made in targeting this age group.
Girls Gotta Know is a free app created to provide young Tasmanian women between the ages of 14 and 24, quick access to essential legal information on a range of practical topics. The app provides easy to understand legal information on housing, employment, partying, relationships, money and general topics.
Project Commissioner
Women's Legal Service Tasmania
Project Creator
Team
Creative Director/Designer: Simone Colburt
Digital Developer: Rik Konings
Illustrator: Steph Ransom
Project Brief
Women’s Legal Service Tasmania is a community legal centre providing legal advice to the women of Tasmania. They run a statewide freecall telephone advice line and are heavily involved in law reform and community legal education.
It is not usual for young women in the target age group of 14-24 to contact Women’s Legal Service Tasmania (WLST) through the telephone advice line. In order to fill this gap, WLST decided to create a free online and mobile app which could be used by young women to get up-to-date information in a non-confronting way. Many young women may not recognise that they have a legal issue and if they do, they may not know where to go to find assistance. Having to speak to a lawyer over the phone can be confronting if they do not know if they have an issue that WLST can assist with.
The primary goal of this project was to remove some of the barriers to reaching legal assistance and give young women a toolkit that they could use to get further help when needed.
Project Need
Girls Gotta Know is the first of it’s kind in Australia. It offers a simplistic way for young women to access important information and advice on a range of legal topics in a manner which speaks to them on their level using communication platforms which they feel comfortable with.
Non-legalistic design and language was utilised to portray a message which is down-to-earth, nonthreatening and positive. Features such as favourites, notes and share allow the user to personalise the information and save it for future use.
Technology has been used for this project to inform but also to influence changes in attitude and behaviour and most importantly to prevent issues arising in the first place.
Design Challenge
The key challenge was to make a large amount of legal information accessible to a broad audience of young women (ages 14-24) in a way that was serious yet non-confronting in style.
Kontrast recognised the fact that design was to play a leading role in how Girls Gotta Know was received by the target audience. In order to get the tone and content right, focus testing was undertaken on a group of grade 10 students who provided feedback throughout the process on design and content. The challenge was to establish a look and feel which was not too kiddie and not too old.
The right visual tone eventuated by the use of design elements such as natural textures, hand drawn graphics, script typography, and key bright colours on a neutral background. Along with this, an illustrator was commissioned to create a memorable mascot ‘girl’ for the campaign who is quirky, friendly, yet sophisticated and confident in style.
The information within the app was broken up into six easily navigable categories. Each category has it’s own key colour and animated illustration to aid usability and to create overall impact.
Sustainability
Previously this type of information would be sent out to the target age group in the form of an information booklet or numerous brochures once the client had made a call to the legal advice line.
Having this information in the form of an app not only removes the psychological barrier of making that initial phone call, but the very nature of the app means that it’s a paper-free medium reducing the need for printed material.
Along with this, the app was designed in a way which allows WLST to easily update the content when needed, saving the org hefty redesign and development fees in the future.
Design, Illustration and Digital Development for this project was all sourced locally.
Digital Experience - Mobile
This award celebrates innovation and creativity in design of a unique user experience in the combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactive content for mobile. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience.
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