As part of the Menzies School of Health Research, the Stay Strong team works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers, practitioners, organisations and communities using strengths-based approaches to wellbeing and mental health promotion and treatment across Australia.
The team enjoyed working alongside Studio Veld to help share our stories through a new website. They were responsive to our needs and requests and have greatly helped to bring to life over 20 years of our work.
–Stay Strong team, Menzies School of Health Research
The Menzies Health Institute has a vast repository of evidence-based mental health resources. Their Stay Strong Team came to us looking for ways to make those resources easily accessible. They wanted to work with people who would honour the true meaning of co-design, understand the deep importance of symbols and listen to the technical difficulties faced in remote areas. They knew they needed a website, but they were also looking for appealing and functional digital solutions that would work in communities across Australia.
We listened. Deeply. And started a 2+ year co-design journey to bring this vast and valuable set of resources to the people who could implement them. The resulting work grew to involve: branding, assets, user research, First Nations design collaboration and guidance, the joy of employing 2 talented First Nations people for part of the project, the development of an interactive PDF that could be downloaded and printed for remote use, UX/UI design, website design and build, and review of their current app. Words aren’t enough to describe how, together, we achieved extraordinary high and low tech solutions through asking, listening, responding and creating.
Using the metaphors that underpin the Stay Strong care plan the tree represents actions and outcomes.
Goal: to communicate through visual cues and remove language as a barrier.
Taking symbols from Indigenous artists and providing functional graphic design solutions.
Goal: to respect the deep meaning of the symbol while translating for digital use.
Deep co-design and user research identified 3 separate user journeys, needing sophisticated development and design approaches for easy use and recognition.
Goal: to create an appealing and simple way for valuable and helpful information to get to the people who need it.
