Yooralla

We conducted significant human-centred design research with participants with diverse needs and preferences. Some represented themselves, others were accompanied by a carer. We also spoke to people attending programs at Yooralla and their accompanying care workers. The experience of living with disability is incredibly varied, so we adjusted our research approach accordingly, ensuring each participant had an experience that met their individual needs.

Human-centred design always accounts for the end user, but a project like this carries greater ethical weight, so co-design with people living with disability sat at the centre of our process. Our iterative cycle of end-user validation and co-design gave them a genuine say in shaping the product. Testing showed that more visual elements prompted greater engagement, as users could see what an activity was likely to be without needing to read. The final designs became simpler and more visual as a direct result.

That reflection step was the hardest part to get right. Testing with support workers revealed why: they were initially resistant to the assessment framework, seeing it as a waste of time. But we also learned that when they drop off their clients, they would often share the small, valuable moments of progress from that day. The existing system gave them no way to capture those details, the moments that over time aggregate into a powerful story.

We reworked the entire framework and created Progress Stories, a system designed to capture small moments and share them in near time with the entire care network. Based on the strength of the pitch alone, the Yooralla C-Suite immediately reallocated funding and went ahead with the new design activity.

The stories were only useful if they reached the same place as everything else. Yooralla’s client goals, plans and funding records lived in its Salesforce platform, so we connected the app to that platform over the Salesforce Force API. A story captured on a phone reached the client’s record, with no second system to reconcile and no re-keying. The moment a carer noticed and the evidence a planner relied on became the same piece of data.

That join is what made the volume matter. The stories created in the first month were not notes stranded in a separate tool. They landed against the goals they belonged to, ready to support the next NDIS funding review.