CBA — Social innovationNext Chapter: Initiating the research
The Social Innovation lab at CBA was on a mission to create an opportunity around one of three topics presented as they wanted to contribute to creating a positive social impact in some way.
We pitched concepts around Disaster Relief, Afforable Housing and Financial Abuse as causes the community would most likely be interested in receiving help from. My team helped to kickstart the research and development that has allowed to creation of ‘Next Chapter’.
This was our process.
How we used visual storytelling to accompany and enhance our research
While we were researching each of the topics, we wanted to create a clear message that emphasised the importance of what we wanted to convey in order to initiate conversations with internal and external stakeholders.
At first I started pitching my research in Power Point packs, but over time I realised that I wanted to tell a story that really spoke the audience that it would be most likely impacting.
The information gathered from conducting interviews and secondary research, led to collating it all into a infographic style tapestry that helped display our learnings and findings. I was given a range of information starting from the history of housing in Australia, to more metaphoric qualitative data and designed two visual narratives that were then displayed when presenting the topic.
The illustrations were successful as they invited a clearer understanding and empathy of the topic where some may not have understood due to lack of relatability.
Aus Housing History
Scrolling tapestry
Using visual illustrations to create a narrative to showcase research done on the topic of affordable housing.
Housing Narrative
Scrolling tapestry
Highlighting the emotional struggle of being able to afford and buy a house in the Australian market.
Parallel worlds
Visual metaphor
Parallel worlds is a method that looks at a completely different system and environment to discover different ways and strategies we could use and reframe in the context of domestic and financial abuse.
Findings from our research
Affordable housing
Our main concern behind affordable housing was the extreme gap in salaries given to key workers. We interviewed a range of customers and wanted to get a better understanding of their thinking, pain points and journey to purchasing a home.
Ranging in age from 29-46, all working full time (except for one who was a teacher with children), all were being paid incomes of $95K or less per year before tax. 6 out of 9 have a home loan, white the others had never had one but were trying to save up for one. Their jobs ranged from Public Servant, Infrastructure engineer, Teacher, Nurse, GM, Accountant and a Labourer.
Financial abuse
I started the research on this particular topic by identifying key characteristics of victim survivors from domestic abuse cases. The most common characteristics were aspects of social isolation, inability to access money or to make money, and the manipulation into feeling self doubt and self worth. With this information, we wanted to look at other stories throughout society and history where people may have felt they were in a similar position and how they managed to get themselves out of it (if they ever did). We dug deep into two concepts where we felt there were similarities and drew parallels to them.
The Parallel Worlds (as highlighted above) is a research method used to reframe a certain concept and try to find similarities elsewhere. I made illustrations to try visualise research and find patterns in concepts that could reflect as abusive situation and victim mindset. The topics were the fall and rise (and fall again) of Germany post World War 1 and the other explored Refugees. All of these examples came from extensive research.
What was interesting to note that came out of that research is that victims of isolation face an extremely difficult battle of their emotions when it comes to trust and community and it’s important we place a duty of care to not only protect these people, but allow them the opportunity to learn how to survive on their own two feet again.
Getting the green light on creating a service for victims of financial abuse
In order to understanding the concept of DV, we had to look at the existing ecosystem of organisations that support victim survivors. Gathering this information was incredibly helpful as it led us to reach out and gather more insights and information regarding the topic. Below is a map of the current (as at 2019) ecosystem based on what I was able to gather:
I ran a workshop of about 10 people to change the way we thought about victim survivors and what CBA’s role could be in creating a solution/opportunity. The following image showcases the information and assumptions we collected from that session:
The outcome of the session exposed the following summaries:
Recovery is beyond just protection and subsistence, by definition --> solution should involve non-DFV service providers. But the transitional stage is also important -provision of DV-specific recovery services to bridge the gap between 'victimhood' and 'reintegration'.
As recovery doesn't occur in isolation, synergistic solutions should involve non-DFV victims.
Due to the desire to measure recovery, we focus on quantitative milestones (income, employment, housing) -but a holistic recovery solution encompasses qualitative growth as well (esteem, confidence, identity)
First responders are glorified as heroes, whilst we undervalue those who support healing and the maintenance of health. Yet the latter are essential for recovery. For this solution, CBA needs to abandon its hero complex.
This thinking inspired the research into Max Neef’s ‘Theory of Needs’ which became a pillar for our research and campaign.
Being introduced to Neef’s ‘Theory of Needs’, which essentially explains that every individual has a range of needs that need to be met in order to be satisfied with their quality of life. This led us down to have a conversation about how people in compromised situations may not be able to have certain needs met and might not be able do so themselves. Inspired by this, my team and I put together a list of a range of ‘needs’ an individual may require. The thinking behind this is that we could then figure out ways to assist victim survivors get back on their toes by providing services that cover the needs that are lacking being met.
WHEEL OF NEEDS
With each need, there were specific elements that related to meeting those needs. After mapping them out, we restructured the topics in a circle to try figure out if it could work as a metric to see which organisations within the DV Ecosystem met certain needs and how exactly they could help people that have those need gaps. The wheel became a really effective tool in visualising where certain case studies had gaps, and which organisations were best suited for them.
The pink section highlights what needs the individual needs met in order to reach satisfaction. The orange section shows how specific organisations fills certain needs and we can see that there is an overlay, meaning that NILS would be able to help fulfil a small fraction of Jing’s needs. In the pack below, we have created various packages that cover a range of needs depending on the individual (as each person requires different things), to see which package (the blue) would work best for each specific individual.
What we wanted to achieve from this research
To create an ecosystem that aimed to protect and allow a safe space for victims of abuse of any kind.
This was our pitch.
Appendix
Deep dive research:
Disaster Relief
We started the research of each topic by splitting up into small groups so that all topics were able to be researched at the same time. I was allocated to understand how Natural Disasters impacted people and if we could find any occurring patterns from these events that we could inspire an opportunity. Looking at who was involved, who was impacted alongside case studies and blockers were the key drivers of our research.
INSIGHTS - WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE PROJECT
The overall project has revealed to us the crucial value of documentation and sharing of information in various formats and in general.
Previous projects from other sectors within the bank should be archived and be able to be accessed by other teams so that there isn’t a cross over in research. This will not only save time for the current research team but also validate the value of the past project. i.e. the housing report that was found to have had external companies come and provide statistics where a lot of money was spent, only to not have the project go live and known about.
There is value in being able to visualise research and break away from the conventional format of slide decks in a pack to summarise research and concepts. Storytelling through graphic images allows the reader to see a rich picture of the concept given to them.
This was discovered through the visualisation of the parallel worlds illustrations where the scenes could be reflected in both scenarios, as to show the comparison clearly. Using visualisations was also helpful to capture the research in a way that allowed the reader to engage with the content in a new and interesting way instead of reading a table full of text.
The housing timeline drew main elements from history to allow the viewer to be able to fully understand why there is a need to work on the particular topic of housing and how it had changed over time.
Concepts were developed to help explain the housing problem that were then created into a visual tapestry, telling a story and highlighting feelings hoping to evoke empathy and understanding for the viewer.
Data visualisation became a tool that became extremely valuable to us in identifying gaps through the needs that are met of a product and the needs are of the consumer.
Max Neef’s needs theory became a vital tool in our research and ideation in allowing us to transform his idea of what humans need and how to satisfy those needs into an interactive data visualisation.
Why his theory was valuable:
Instead of looking at needs in the form of a hierarchy as what we know as Maslow’s needs, Neef looks at human needs holistically and claims that in order for humans to be fully satisfied with their life, they have multiple needs that are required to be met. The needs are protection, affection, subsistence, freedom, idleness, creation, understanding, identity and participation. And in order to fulfil those needs, a range of things exist to satisfy those needs that a person should have access to or experience, these are known as satisfiers. We found this information valuable because we noticed that each of the potential partners that we were interested in working with all addressed a range of satisfiers that met different needs. In order to see which service providers met the most needs, we laid each of them out against each other to see which needs were met by which services and were able to see a lot of gaps in creation, identity and idleness.
What we created from it:
We designed a circle with 4 tiers, starting with the each of the needs on the outer circle, how we believe the victim survivor should feel once having met those needs in the 2nd tier (a desired state), the 3rd tier (intermediate outcomes) is broken up into statements underlying attitudes and state of mind that the victim survivor should be in, in order to satisfy those overall needs. The inner circle, being the 4th tier (project objectives), is a series of factors that come into play when considering how these satisfiers may be met.
This tool became one of our greatest assets in allowing us to capture the essence of a range of variables. We looked at what ‘needs’ existing service providers may meet and using this to asses and validate their use as a partner. We also took case studies of victim survivors and identified what services they could benefit from after evaluating their stories. These services helped us identify what satisfiers we assumed the victim survivor could benefit from in order to meet those needs. Combining the service providers data with the user data allows us to identify which service best fits and simultaneously highlights gaps.
Not just finance:
The project itself has directed its overall view towards the recovery stage of a victim survivor, allowing them the opportunity to restart their lives through a ‘Fresh Start’ initiative, in the hope to avoid causing potential harm by the perpetrator. After looking at a range of case studies and user stories of domestic violence and their process of recovery, we found a recurring theme about the importance and value of quality of life. One particular story inspired us by stating, “it’s be good to see more humour and celebration of what is good in life…” While the overall idea of fresh start is to help them financially in their recovery process, we found it equally valuable to simultaneously address the quality of life in this stage. We viewed the notion of the ‘No Interest Loan’ as a first responder hero in the grand scheme of things and saw things like art classes and meet ups as a secondary responder, allowing to victim to heal while giving them a sense of purpose, commitment and community. Together we brainstormed what assets could exist in making someone’s life easier, enjoyable and valuable so that we could fill the gaps addressing the needs that the service providers couldn’t. This was broken down into groups linking to home life and assistance, social aspects, skill building, entertainment, general assistance, physical and mental health, self care, admin, financial and education. In order to justify the value of each of these sectors, each category was placed within the needs circle where we identified which satisfiers we believed it could meet.
Looking at people’s stories and experiences, we were able to create assumptions of what satisfiers they could benefit from in their process of recovery and healing.