Is this abuse
4 week project
Individual project
Work of 2021
A website that helps the victims of verbal abuse.
Context:
Verbal abuse is a form of emotional abuse. It often involves demeaning, yelling, frightening or controlling the victim. It could cause the victims to believe in very negative views about themselves, lowering their self-esteem, it could also impact their relationships and social skills.
Although the effects of verbal abuse can be significant, once a person is able to recognize the verbal abuse, they can start making informed decisions about the abuser and access tools to reduce the impact of abuse, With intervention, victims can overcome this situation.
Problem
Victims have difficulty recognizing the abuse.
Many victims expressed doubt about whether or not they were being verbally abused until their late teens and early 20s.
“I knew that body shaming is wrong, but I wasn’t sure that it was abusive.”
— Anonymous, Age 28
Victims don’t know how to change the situation.
All of the victims want to change the situation, but some wait until they can’t take it anymore to make an extreme move. Others are scared to make any moves until they get professional help.
“I was too scared to express my feelings to my mum until my therapist gave me the courage it’s ok to do it.”
— Anonymous, Age 25
Victims need emotional support.
It’s very important to support the victim while he/she is trying to get out from an abusive relationship. This could be a friend, a family member or even people online who had similar experiences.
“Seeing other people having samiliar experience makes me feel less vulnera- ble, I have also learnt a lot from people who have samilar experiences.”
— Anonymous, Age 32
How might we help the victim?
Why should we focus on the victim?
The focus is on the victim because the abusers usually think that they have done nothing wrong and they are the one who is taking control of the relationship with abusive language.
The victim is the one who is suffering from this abusive relationship, therefore they are more willing to make a change. Their reaction to the abuser could change the a user’s behaviour. Therefore, education and helping the victim is significant.
How to make them feel that it’s not their fault that they are a victim?
Show statistics
Encourage them to talk to the therapist or professional.
Encourage them to talk to more friends (because most people will recognize the abuse in a third person view)
Teach them the psychological cause of the abuser’s actions, so they can understand that they are not at fault.
How to help them to protect themselves?
Education
Build up a trusted community, so they have supports from the people who also experience the same situation.
Set up an emengercy contact
Teach them to make a boundary and how to keep it.
Partice with what they might say when it happens.
Early Sketches
Low-fi prototype
User Flow
Solutions
A website that helps the victims of verbal abuse. It provides a test, education, community and professional help.
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Test
A test for new users to determine if they are experiencing verbal abuse.
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Education
Verbal abuse education to help the victim to understand it.
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Community help
A community where it’s safe to share experiences.
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Professional Help
Professionally guided group development and individual therapy.
Result
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Logo Design
The text of the logo is “IS THIS ABUSE”. People who experience verbal abuse are usually questioning if they are abused or not. The logo is designed based on this concept, the invisible line crossed out “IS THIS” in order to convince the victim that they should not questioning themselves, this is abuse.
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Home page
There are a few short descriptions of what this website is offering, giving the user an overlook of what this website. The user can use the shortcut buttons to check each page.
Test
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A Test
A test for the victims could help them to realize the fact that what they are experience is classified as abuse.
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Test result Positive
If the result is positive, it will lead the user to the Education page.
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Test result Negative
If the result is negative, then the user could share the page to people that they know who could be experiencing it.
Education & Community
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Education
3 categories of Education: What is verbal abuse, effects of verbal abuse, Verbal abuse treatment.
An introduction video to the sub categories of the learning area to quickly draw attention and engage the viewer.
Buttons on the bottom that will lead to a relevant topic on the end of the page to creates a smoother UX.
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A community
When they are helping other people, it could also help them to boost their self-esteem. This could also give hope to people who are in an abusive relation- ship now.
Seeing other people who are having the same experience as themselves could also make them feel that they are not alone.
It’s important to show support from other people but inappropriate to like someone’s experience about verbal abuse. Instead of a “like button”, there is a “hug button”. Giving people a hug to show your support, works regardless of whether the post is about how they overcame verbal abuse or if they need your help to deal with verbal abuse.
Professional Help
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Professional Help - Book a therapist
Victims often experience anxiety or depression and these things are hard to get over by themselves.
The victim could also be in a situation where they are unable to set appropriate boundaries and leave with their own willpower without some professional help.
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Professional Help - Book a lecture
Not all victims need individual therapy to overcome verbal abuse, but some might still need guidance in how to understand and cope with verbal abuse better.
This can also be helpful for people who are friends or family of people experiencing verbal abuse and not just for the victim themselves.
Reflections
Social Impact
As I mentioned in the very beginning of this project, the lack of awareness surrounding verbal abuse in all the different relationships in which is occurs is prevalent. This prevalence and lack of awareness combined, leads to a very high level of normalization for the verbal abuse, which helps it spread continue to cause damage.
The goal of this website, is that through raising awareness and recognition about the forms and harms of verbal abuse, instances of verbal abuse will stop being normalized, this will both reduce the amount of verbal abuse, but also make it easier for victims to stand-up to abuse, as it will be clear from the surrounding culture, that the behaviour exhibited by the abuser is not acceptable.
Ultimately this will lead to better environments at home, in school and at work.
What’s next?
One thing that I didn’t have enough time to develop in this project is marketing. I have noticed that people started to realizing the verbal abuse they were victims of when they were in their teenager years or early 20s. If the website becomes public, I would like to advertise it on platforms like instagram, youtube and tiktok. I was also thinking there could be a podcast where the professional can share more stories about how to overcome verbal abuse, this would bring more access and more awareness.
Additionally, it might be possible with some tailoring for the website to be integrated with educational institutions in countries where verbal abuse from parents is still very prevalent, to help the kids navigate better through a verbally abusive home environment.