Case study · William Joseph
How B Corp design agency William Joseph applied Chayn’s trauma-informed design principles to create more equitable digital products
William Joseph is a B Corp design agency building digital products for charities, universities and public health organisations. They test those products with the people who will use them, and often on subjects like dementia, which can sit close to home for participants and for the team itself. Chayn’s trauma-informed design principles, white paper, and workshops gave them the vocabulary and structure to handle those conversations.
No shared vocabulary for the issues they were facing
Years ago, on a project about brain health, the team at William Joseph made an animation. It hit close enough to home that Nic, one of the designers, had to leave the room. Nobody had seen it coming, and there was no language for it, or programme for supporting Nic afterwards.
The mechanisms and the conversations we would have about that were so much poorer than they are now. It wouldn’t have taken us to get to that point where she felt so triggered that she was leaving a room before we’d had that conversation.
William Joseph designs inclusive products, services, and brands for organisations working for positive change, mostly charities, universities and public health organisations. At the heart of their work is what they call “equity by design.” That means not treating everyone the same, but understanding what people need and creating flexible, simple products to meet those needs. Getting that right depends on research with the people who’ll use the service: interviews, focus groups, and usability testing.
As they became more intentional about working in a trauma-informed way, they realised the people in those sessions might have experienced trauma related to the topic, or not related to it at all, and either way it could affect how they engaged. It also might affect their own team. “We’ve also been considering that our team may also have personal experience with the topic,” says Lucy Pickering, UX & Content Strategist, “which is, you know, largely a positive, but then there’s also the consideration about how exploring that could possibly trigger them in some way.”
Principles, a white paper, and workshops, applied to how they research
Based on years of experience working with survivors of gender-based violence, Chayn has published much of what we have learned about doing that work safely including a set of trauma-informed design principles, a white paper covering research, design and internal practice, and workshops on trauma-informed design and vicarious trauma. William Joseph used all of it, and spent time with Jenny Winfield, then Chayn’s user research lead, to work out how it applied to them.
Lucy first came across Chayn through Jenny’s blogs. That led to the workshop, then the white paper, then more workshops together. What struck her was that the material came with real-life examples and experiences, not just theory.
I think William Joseph, we could have adapted another set of trauma informed principles to work for us as an organisation, but Chayn, having already done that work in a way that applies to the way that you’re working, allowed us to springboard into, okay, how are we actually going to apply this to our practice?
They focused first on research and testing, where they have the most direct contact with people, and three changes came out of it.
- 1They now rank projects by how much trauma is likely to come up, from subjects like children experiencing online sexual abuse at one end to projects where the topic is unlikely to touch anyone painfully at the other. The higher up that scale a project sits, the more support they build in. And what do they build in? “It’s usually time,” Lucy says, “giving extra time to each stage of something that may involve more trauma.” Room to prepare before a session, and room to process afterwards.
- 2They added monthly check-ins, pared back to what James calls “more like a raising your hand kind of session,” where someone can flag a project close to their own experience before it starts, so peer support or counselling can be arranged.
- 3They use scope of practice, which emerged in conversation with Chayn rather than from a document. It defines where the limits of their work sit, and when to bring in partners with deeper expertise. “When we’re working on something and it feels a bit uncomfortable, and you’re not really sure why,” Lucy says, “we can go back to it and say, well, is this because we need to do some more training in a particular area, or is this because we’re maybe working in a role that isn’t research, it’s something else?”
Equipped to support each other, and to take on harder work
They recently worked on a brain health tool for Alzheimer’s Research UK, and Nic worked on it while her own mother was living with dementia. This time the team was equipped to support her. The scale, the check-ins and scope of practice gave the team “a shared vocabulary for that work,” James says. “The gut feel is kind of there anyway, but it’s the feeling that you’ve got the tools and the vocabulary and the trust between people to be able to do that.”
And that vocabulary has travelled beyond William Joseph. “Out of all the things that I’ve referenced to others I’ve been working with recently, that scope of practice has been far and away the thing I’ve referenced most,” James shares.
William Joseph are now taking on projects about childhood trauma and online sexual abuse, confident they have the tools, vocabulary and frameworks to do that work well.
As far as I’m concerned, the principles are the Chayn ones. I see them as an enormous shortcut, a gift. We’re years ahead of where we would otherwise be.
People are generous enough to share their lived experience with us. Working in a way where they can see how sharing those experiences will go on to help others and maybe shape a product or service, that’s important.
If you’re working in user research, design, or building digital products and services, and want to explore how trauma-informed approaches could strengthen your practice, we’d love to hear from you.