Hireup – designing a new employment model for disability support workers by We Discover Wins Australia’s Coveted Good Design Award For Design Excellence.
The winners of Australia’s peak international design awards were announced Tuesday, 12 October during the 2021 Good Design Awards Week. The Good Design Awards are the highest honor for design and innovation in the country and reward projects across 12 design disciplines and 30 subcategories.
We Discover received a prestigious Good Design Award Winner Accolade in the Design Research category in recognition for outstanding design and innovation for Hireup – designing a new employment model for disability support workers.
The Australian Good Design Awards is the country’s oldest and most prestigious international award for design and innovation with a proud history dating back to 1958.
The Awards celebrate the best new products and services on the Australian and international market, excellence in architectural design, precinct design, engineering, fashion, digital and communication design, and reward new and emerging areas of design including design strategy, social impact design, design research and up-and-coming design talent in the Next Gen category.
The 2021 Good Design Awards attracted a record number of submissions with 933 design projects evaluated by more than 70 Australian and international Jurors, including designers, engineers, architects, and thought leaders. Each entry was evaluated according to a strict set of design evaluation criteria which includes good design, design innovation, and design impact.
Projects recognized with an Australian Good Design Award demonstrate excellence in professional design and highlight the impact a design-led approach has on business success and social and environmental outcomes.
The Good Design Awards Jury commented:
Hireup platform aims to change how people with disabilities hire and manage support workers. The platform re-design is a response to recent legal changes impacting on their existing model. This was the design team challenge. The design was collaborative and various ‘personas’ with hypothetical problems were created.
The framework used is common but supports the final output. The impact reported is an increased employment number. Overall, this was a straightforward design thinking/service design project that has been very well executed. To be commended is the sense of inclusion the interview participants felt through this design research — the support workers as well as people with disabilities that they supported.
Dr. Brandon Gien, CEO of Good Design Australia said:
Receiving an Australian Good Design Award is a testament to embedding design excellence at the heart of a product, service, place, or experience. Although 2021 continues to be another challenging year, it is incredibly inspiring to see designers and businesses working together to find innovative, customer-centric design solutions to local and global challenges and to see them recognized and rewarded for their efforts through these prestigious Awards.
Dr. Gien went on to say:
The importance of embracing good design principles is now more important than ever as many businesses around the world have had to completely re-think their business strategies to remain competitive. The standard of design excellence represented in this year’s Awards is the best I’ve ever seen in my 25 years of running these Awards, an encouraging sign that the design sector is flourishing.
Project Details
Project Title: Hireup
Designed in: Australia
Project Description:
Hireup is an NDIS registered online platform built to revolutionize the way people with disabilities find, hire and manage support workers. Traditionally, people with disabilities have had little control over selecting the support workers who provided care for them.
Hireup has disrupted this by giving them both choice and control. The project aimed to give eligible Support Workers the option to be employed by Hireup on a permanent basis, while maintaining the flexibility inherent in a digital marketplace model.
Designed by: We Discover
Commissioned by: Hireup
About Good Design Australia and the Australian Good Design Awards
Good Design Australia is an international design promotion organization responsible for managing Australia’s annual Good Design Awards and other signature design events.
With a proud history that dates back to 1958, Good Design Australia remains committed to promoting the importance of design to business, industry, government, and the general public and the critical role it plays in creating a better, safer, and more prosperous world.
About We Discover
We Discover gives technology and platform businesses confidence in their product strategy and prioritization. They do this by partnering with product teams to explore and adapt to changing consumer behaviors and rapidly design product experiences with true customer value.
We Discover is open, transparent, and outcome-focused and believes in less paper, less talk, and more action. Their lean, full-stack design teams offer a rare combination of skills, each mastering the use of research, design, and technology to deliver on short (today) and long (future) term goals or objectives. We Discover partner with organizations to help prioritize and focus their efforts to drive product innovation and accelerate growth.
We Discover is represented in Sydney and Melbourne and work across a range of industries including financial, property, telco’s, travel, government, startups, and more. They have had the pleasure of working with clients such as Qantas, Finder, Zip, Wisr, Secure Code Warrior, HappyCo, NSW Government, TAFE NSW, Children’s Cancer Institute, Hireup, ISCA, Isentia, Seatfrog, and CSIRO.
Their services range from customer research, rapid prototyping, user testing, product design, UX/UI, innovation strategy, experimentation, and design delivery.
We Discover believe in exploring new perspectives and looking at things differently, turning structure upside down, back to front, and sideways.
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