trauma-informed-design

Trauma-Informed Design

Trauma-informed design builds tools around the realities of people who have experienced violence: defaults that fail safe, control left in the user’s hands, language that validates rather than directs, and the assumption that a device may be monitored. It is closely tied to Survivor-Centered Design and underpins discreet, dignified experiences. Insight Exchange’s resources — My Safety Kit, Responders Lab, No Hidden Door — are practical expressions of the approach.

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personal-safety-apps

Personal Safety Apps

Personal safety apps are mobile applications that help a user summon help, share their whereabouts, or deter harm. Most combine a Panic Button, Location Sharing, and a Trusted Network, and many connect to Crisis Hotlines and Resources. They span two broad postures: alarm-and-summon tools aimed at acute danger, and network-and-intervene tools rooted in Bystander Intervention that aim to prevent harm before it escalates.

The central design tension is Privacy and Safety: the same capabilities that protect (continuous location, contact lists, always-on microphones) can be turned against a user — see Location Tracking Abuse and Stalkerware — so survivor-facing tools must be weighed with Trauma-Informed Design in mind.

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Member apps assert instance_of::[[Personal Safety Apps]]; see backlinks.

victim-survivor

Victim-Survivor

Victim-survivor is the term used in much lived-experience-led practice (including Insight Exchange’s) for a person who has been subjected to violence and abuse. It deliberately holds both realities at once — the harm done to a person and their ongoing agency — and signals a stance of centring that person’s own meaning, pace and decisions, as in Trauma-Informed Design and Survivor-Centered Design.

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Related toTrauma-Informed Design
Subjected toGender-Based Violence

survivor-centered-design

Survivor-Centered Design

Survivor-centered design places the rights, needs, safety, and stated preferences of people who have experienced violence at the center of every design decision, rather than treating them as a population to be managed. A survivor-centered approach prioritises a survivor’s safety, agency, and wellbeing, and insists that survivors be involved at every stage of design and implementation — not consulted once and then designed around. In service and product terms it translates into the trauma-informed commitments of safety, choice, consent, collaboration, trustworthiness, and empowerment, and into reframing the operative question from “why isn’t this survivor ready?” to “what does this survivor need right now to feel safe?”. It treats lived experience as expertise and resists building tools for survivors without building them with survivors.

The approach is closely tied to Trauma-Informed Design (its principles overlap heavily) and is the practical lens through which a vault tool is judged to genuinely centre the Victim-Survivor. It is informed by Feminist HCI and design-justice thinking, which name whose voices design usually erases. Survivor-centered design also sets a critical boundary against Techno-Solutionism: a flashy feature that increases a survivor’s exposure, or that an abuser can repurpose, fails the test no matter how clever, which is why these projects weigh Privacy and Safety and the realities of Coercive Control before shipping.

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Related toTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
Informed byFeminist HCI
Tension withTechno-Solutionism

Sources

https://www.spotlightinitiative.org/design-survivor-centred-programme
https://wscadv.org/projects/domestic-violence-housing-first/toolkit/survivor-driven-trauma-informed-mobile-advocacy/

Tags: #concept #design #survivor-centered

no-hidden-door

No Hidden Door

Insight Exchange (DVSM) · Website audit + reports + guidance + art collection · 2021–2022

Summary

No Hidden Door reframes every sector as a possible “door” to information and support for victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexualised violence — and argues that because safety and communication are inextricably linked, the quality and safety of public-facing communication (especially websites) is itself a safety matter. Many victim-survivors only ever browse a website and never make contact, so unclear, opaque or unsafe digital “doors” can extend an abuser’s control and leave people unable to navigate support.

Between October and December 2021, Insight Exchange audited 200+ websites across five industries (including NSW Health, Employee Assistance Programs, support services, and police) as sample doors in the information ecosystem, publishing an executive summary and per-sector reports. The work includes practical guidance for industry staff who design website content and functions relating to violence and abuse — focused on content and function rather than aesthetics — and a commissioned art collection by Louise Whelan dramatising how the burden of effort to find, ask for and access help currently falls on the victim-survivor.

Connections

Produced byInsight Exchange
PromotesDiscreet Access
- Calls for “discreet, dignified and supportive” digital doors.
AddressesTech-Enabled Abuse
- Opaque communication lets people using abuse extend control.
CentresVictim-Survivor
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/no-hidden-door/

Tags: #resource #report #communication-design

responders-lab

Responders Lab

Insight Exchange (DVSM) · Free facilitated virtual session (~2 hrs) · Groups of 10–30

Summary

The Responders Lab is a free, facilitated, peer-learning experience from Insight Exchange designed to deepen how everyday people understand and respond to domestic, family and sexualised violence. Its premise is that every response matters — that each of us is a friend, colleague, neighbour or family member who may be confided in, and that responses are ongoing rather than a single reaction to a disclosure.

Four content modules — “Our Interactions,” “Our Responses,” “My Ecosystem Matters,” and “Follow My Meaning” — emphasise dignity, not operating from assumptions, and keeping the victim-survivor at the centre of their own ecosystem. Sessions run as two-hour virtual workshops for groups, with content developed from local and international lived and learned expertise and offered in English, Spanish and Arabic.

Connections

Produced byInsight Exchange
TeachesBystander Intervention
- Frames everyone as an ongoing “responder,” broader than crisis-moment bystanding.
Informed byTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/responders-lab/

Tags: #resource #training #responders

my-safety-kit

My Safety Kit

Insight Exchange (DVSM) · Reflection resource (booklet + animations + decision-making tool) · Free

Summary

My Safety Kit is a reflection resource from Insight Exchange for people who are, or may be, experiencing domestic, family and sexualised violence. Rather than triggering an alarm, it supports a person “at their pace, at their lead” with information and reflection questions about how they see their situation and what they might be weighing as they look ahead. It includes a decision-making tool and reflection questions across areas of wellbeing — material basics / economic wellbeing, love and connection, participation, learning, physical and mental health, and safety — and is available as a booklet (including a My Safety Kit Aotearoa edition) with short introductory animations.

It is accompanied by de-identified lived-experience insights (e.g. “Sam” and “Alex”) that map real experiences against the kit’s focus areas, illustrating what a person may be doing — or not doing — to stay safe and well within their relationship.

Connections

Produced byInsight Exchange
Informed byTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
SupportsRisk Assessment
- Self-directed reflection rather than an actuarial checklist.
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence
AddressesEconomic Abuse

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/my-safety-kit/

Tags: #resource #reflection #lived-experience

insight-exchange

Insight Exchange

Domestic Violence Service Management (DVSM) · Australia · Registered charity (ABN 26 165 400 635)

Summary

Insight Exchange is an Australian initiative established, developed and governed by Domestic Violence Service Management (DVSM). Rather than an app, it is a body of lived-experience-led resources that centre the dignity and agency of people subjected to domestic, family and sexualised violence — and that support the people and institutions around them to respond well. Its material is organised around Listening, Exploring, Responding, Learning and Participating, and is published in multiple languages (including Spanish and Arabic).

Its design philosophy is a useful counterpoint to the “panic button” model of safety tech: instead of a device that summons help in a crisis, Insight Exchange produces reflective resources (e.g. My Safety Kit), practice programs for responders (e.g. Responders Lab), and communication-ecosystem audits (e.g. No Hidden Door) grounded in what victim-survivors say keeps them safe and well.

Connections

Informed byTrauma-Informed Design
CentresVictim-Survivor
AddressesDomestic Family and Sexualised Violence
ProducesMy Safety Kit
ProducesResponders Lab
ProducesNo Hidden Door

Sources

https://www.insightexchange.net/

Tags: #org #australia #lived-experience

discreet-access

Discreet Access

Discreet access is the cluster of UX patterns that let a person reach safety tools without an abuser, bystander, or a monitored device noticing. In practice this means disguised or “cloaked” launchers (apps that present as a news reader or weather app), silent or stealth alerting that fires an SOS while an innocuous home screen stays on display, fake-call screens that fabricate an excuse to leave a room, hidden trigger gestures (e.g. a triple-tap on the screen edge), and a deliberate refusal to store call logs or alert history that could later be discovered. Some pilots go further and ship with no app name and no obvious icon, sending an in-app call to police without the user having to speak. These choices assume the threat model of Tech-Enabled Abuse and Coercive Control: that the device itself may be surveilled, and that being seen seeking help is its own danger.

Discreet access is a concrete expression of Trauma-Informed Design — control left with the user, defaults that fail safe — and it is a defensive response to Stalkerware and Location Tracking Abuse. It overlaps with the Panic Button (the quietest possible trigger) and with quick-exit affordances that scrub a screen instantly. The same cloaking that protects a Victim-Survivor can, however, create a Privacy and Safety tension: hidden tools are harder to audit, and a feature designed to evade an abuser can resemble the very disguise techniques abusers use, so the design must center the survivor’s own assessment of risk.

In this vault

Part ofTrauma-Informed Design
Protects againstStalkerware
Related toPanic Button
Tension withPrivacy and Safety

Sources

https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/24/domestic-violence-app/
https://violencereductionalliance.co.uk/hollie-guard/
https://www.techsafety.org/spyware-and-stalkerware-phone-surveillance

Tags: #concept #ux #safety