Vidanyx
Saving children from trauma, one child advocacy center at a time.
With over 700,000 cases of child abuse in the US every year, and 850 Nationally-Accredited Child Advocacy Centers (CACs), we wanted to help these centers manage recordings and keep evidence safe through better technologies. Vidanyx is a secure cloud-based video management platform for Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) to help victimised children of sexual or physical abuse.
Context
Victims of child abuse seek out Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) to talk to a forensic interviewer about his or her incident. In these facilities, various professionals work together to investigate the abuse and help the child heal from trauma.
CAC Roles
These interviews are recorded in a secure, safe, child-friendly room. Using the recording software on the computer, the interviewer burns the file onto a DVD and physically stores it away in a filing cabinet.
​
Unfortunately, these physical copies are too often lost when passed down or physically deteriorates from being stored too long, becoming unable to use as evidence in court. This leaves the offender go unpunished and attack more children.
CAC Process
1. Child victim is brought to a Child Advocacy Center.
2. Forensic interview asks victim about the incident in a safe, secure room.
3. The interview is recorded onto a computer and burned onto a DVD.
4. The physical DVD copy is archived into a filing cabinet.
5. When the interview is requested for trial, the file is passed down the chain of custody.
6. In many cases, the evidence is lost through the process.
7. If the victim doesn't have enough evidence, the attacker is free to go.
Objective
To help forensic interviewers at child advocacy centers manage recordings of interviews with the victim of child abuse, building a better evidence-management will save children from recollecting trauma from physical or sexual abuse.
User Research
To not veer far from the existing digital experiences users are familiar with, we took a look at existing UX to find the product requirements our users need in Vidanyx by collecting ethnographic research and data with our marketing team.
​
Initially, we had to make some design assumptions on the layout of the pages based on experiences our users may be familiar with (Facebook, Gmail, Calendar, Messages, etc.) considering,
-
User Personas: Age Range, Gender, Role, Needs, Personality, Favourite Apps, etc.
-
User Scenarios: Upload interview videos onto Vidanyx platform with as many details on the case as possible. Be able to share evidence with others down the line of the chain of custody.
User Persona
As we were brainstorming and whiteboarding user personas and user flows of the experience, we conducted questionnaires, non-directed interviews, and a few ethnographic studies in their natural environments.
A notable study we conducted was at the King Country Child-Advocacy Center in downtown Seattle.
Ethnographic Study
It was a great learning experience to observe where and how they conduct the interviews with the children, the type of recording equipment in the room, the outdated and cluttered software and hardware systems, the prolonged length of time it takes to burn the DVDs, and, in particular, the way the DVDs are handled: stored and archived into what seems like an abyss of filing cabinets with deteriorating evidence.
Key Research Findings
-
Children between the ages of 4-11 come into King County Courthouse to meet with a forensic interviewer
-
Forensic Interviewer talks to child in a room with 2 chairs and 2 cameras
-
Session is recorded onto computer software MetaCase (also sells software to police/law enforcement)
-
Social working specialist communicates with parents to help them find the best way to handle the victim's situation; what next steps to take; go over what would be best for the child
-
Forensic Interviewer is questioned by detective or law enforcement:
-
Why the interviewer asked a question in some order, or avoided some questions on National Forensic Interviewer list, or asked a question in this way (to eliminate bias as much as possible, so doesn't get stunted in court by opposition)
-
As different child-advocacy centers and groups of custody (forensic interviewers, detectives, police) used varying terminology, we initially struggled to define the "right" labels to define the terms throughout Vidanyx.
​
There were multiple times throughout the design process where we had to change the labels due to legal regulations, or terms being miscommunicated to judges and law enforcement.
​
This was a notable research study to help define fundamental components for our design process, but we maintained an open mind, asking many different users within the centers to account for different situations for safekeeping evidence.
Design
Language
While designing the user flows and wireframes for each section, I chose colours on the page that complement and contrast the logo colours, and a clean, round typeface to complement the shapes and style of the UI elements.
We decided to follow the Google Material Design Guidelines to maintain clean, consistent designs for the web platform. Using Material standards also gave developers an easier time to follow the design details in our mockups.
​
Without an initial branding plan, we created a design system as we built out the wireframes, developing UI consistency as we continued to build more features and pages.
For instance, defining different button styles for the navigation bar versus within card components versus on the page.
By creating a page in Sketch of symbols with an efficient labeling system, it was easy to create new UI features and maintain a clean asset management system which could be shared across file and devices by uploading our Sketch symbols to the InVision DSM (Design Manager System) plugin.
Wireframes
Using basic symbols (circles, rounded boxes) themed with Vidanyx colours, I started laying out the elements to play with the information architecture (content strategy/hierarchy of design elements) on the pages.
From understanding the business requirements and user needs of the product, I noted the fundamental elements of Vidanyx:
​
-
​A way to upload the interview recording with details
-
A way to manage all uploaded interviews, including editing, deleting, sorting, filtering
-
A way associate the interview with the correct case
-
A way to share the interview and pass down the chain of custody (give others limited access)
-
A way to write notes on the video
-
A way to download the video(s)
-
A way to attach relevant documents/media to interview case (medical images or records from)
With so many different components encompassed in a case, I separated each part into cards. Struggling to define the concept behind the terms: interview, case, recording, file, we asked forensic interviewers and law enforcement to help clarify the language and correct legal terms to use in Vidanyx.
​
Each case file contains all evidence for a victim of physical/sexual abuse. We designed each card with the bottom right corner cut off for the shape to resemble a "case file", a shape that would look clean and simple, and not interfere with the content inside the card. We designed the cards large enough to fit in the information to identify the case, but small enough to scroll through many interviews to quickly find and manage the cards.
The content strategy for the order of labels inside the card was based on our user research findings: which fields were mandatory for uploading an interview session and which fields can easily help manage the cards.
Adding a status at the top of each card with a colour associated bar helps the user easily identify which interviews to manage.
Collection of Cases
Prototypes
By exporting Vidanyx screens from Sketch to InVision, I built the prototype interactions to show how the user would use the product.
Challenges
The biggest design challenge was taking into account different user groups and defining how each design differed. The experience for managers of child advocacy centers, forensic interviewers, and users outside of the CACs (law enforcement, detectives, etc.) had to be different based on their level of access to the private information.
The manager or admin role would have access to all the sections of Vidanyx.
Whereas, the non-manager role would have restricted access.
Admin or Manager View
Non-manager View
During the initial release phase, the marketing and customer-facing team was feeding us recordings and feedback from our users.
As it was a small sample size, influence large design decisions and completely alter the experience, which would have pleased some.
To find the balance between what the user wants and what the business needs, we worked directly with the business side when collecting feedback from users and presented best possible solutions.
First Usage
For example, implementing transcriptions to help viewers understand the evidence, since in some cases, the forensic interviewers had to manually deliver the recordings on a DVD to other states to transcribe the videos. Who were these third-parties? Did they sign agreements to keep the evidence safe? HIPAA compliance?
Whether to take in feedback and requests from all different types of users, and how many other user flow experiences we should consider for certain users. To define a smooth experience, we defined the hierarchy of most important features to add.
Another challenge the design team faced was the absence of notifications until after the release of the product.
The development team was facing other challenges and more urgent bugs in the software so the notifications feature was placed low in their priority list. We pushed the team for the notifications feature every sprint.
During these weeks, we had to design some features with existing code used for some of our other UI components (modals).
Many of the design challenges we faced would have been solved with the creation of the notifications feature so one of the hardest challenges we faced with the development team was that they were influencing our design decisions.
In some cases, urgent feature requests got relayed from business directly to development, which we only discovered while testing the product. Coming as a surprise to the design team, we had to go in and fix the UI selection and experience on the spot.
Results
These challenges helped us constantly question, look for a different approach, and iterate the designs to find better solutions to save more children affected by abuse.
Vidanyx Impact
See live results at vidanyx.com/impact/
Our continuously growing reach and passion to save children will never be forgotten. This product journey was challenging but a tremendous learning experience that created a huge social impact on children's lives throughout the country.
