JDI
Bridging the gap in support for incarcerated individuals nationwide.
TIMELINE
Sep 2024 — Jun 2025
TEAM
1 Project Manager
6 Developers
1 Product Designer (Me)
MY ROLE
Product Designer
User Research
UX, UI Design
Prototype Design
SKILLS
FigJam, Figma
Premiere Pro
Compliance Design
Design Advocacy
THE GOAL
Working with Just Detention International as the sole designer
What does an incarcerated individual do when they are sexually abused in prison?
These stories are real, and they’re frighteningly common. Countless go untold, because staying quiet is often the only rational choice when the person who wronged you is the same person who controls your daily life.
Just Detention International (JDI) asked me to design a tool that could help.
Just Detention International (JDI) is a nonprofit organization that seeks to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention.
The app was approved by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for piloting with 5,000+ incarcerated individuals. Deployment is currently on hold pending a hardware contract resolution with California facilities.
Project Highlights
0.1 Shrink in to direct attention to main actions.
0.2 Snapshot of key components.
0.3 Help Resources for more urgent users.
0.1
Shrink in to direct attention to main actions.
0.1 Shrink in to direct attention to main actions.
0.2
Snapshot of key components.
0.3
Help Resources for more urgent users.
THE CHALLENGES
Prison tech is nothing like consumer tech.
Users with low literacy and no digital fluency
Legal accuracy must balance with accessible language
Hardware constraints
Some users are in crisis
RESEARCH
What challenges do incarcerated individuals face when seeking support?
USABILITY TESTING
Insights from users
LAYOUT
Digitizing analog resources with familiar digital language.
Starting from JDI’s traditional materials.
I hand-sorted 100s of various files into three categories seen in Figure 1.2 to address both legal compliance and the needs of two distinct user groups: those in crisis and those healing/exploring.
0.4 Visualization of various files from JDI.
0.5 Excerpt from user flows diagram. Main sections in app.
DECISIONS
Balancing legal compliance & technical constraints with sensitive users meant making informed iterations.
DECISION #1
Granular booklet navigation without saved user sessions
Before
Only 5 high level sections that JDI decided.
After
Manually divided relevant subsections for increased accuracy in finding where a reader left off.
Color to indicate current place at a glance.
1.1 Booklet nav bar improvements.
DECISION #2
Break up dense video
PREA created one long, dense video. I cut it up into 16 subsections and created a YouTube-like catalog.
2.1 Dividing long video into digestible parts.
2.2 Booklet nav bar improvements.
DECISION #3
Detailed Help Resources navigation
Before
Only 5 filters for Resource Type. Users struggled to find specific resources.
After
Advocated for search with devs.
Resource Level - multi select = scalability for more states.
Original Resource Type filters.
3.1 Left: Early Lo-Fi presented to users. Right: Improved side bar interactions.
DECISION #4
Always opt for clarity (language toggle)
Visual cues can have cultural implications. Thoughtfulness avoids unnecessary confusion.
Before
Flag icons & abbreviated language names.
After
Opt for clear words.
USA != English. Spain != Spanish
4.1 Language toggle before and after.
FINAL DESIGNS
An accessible hub for urgent info & education.
5.1 Home page.
5.2 Help Resources.
5.3 Legal rights education (PREA).
5.4 Hope for Healing Guide
IN RETROSPECT
Navigating bureaucracy in a sensitive space
No single design problem was as challenging as maintaining scope as a sole designer. This was exacerbated by sensitive user needs and a space with heavy red tape, where compliance and approval means everything.
Designing an unprecedented tablet app taught me to balance design intuition with evidence-backed research. I learned to create familiarity through thinking about why things work in other interfaces.
I learned design advocacy is a skill and not to be taken lightly. I faced pushback with search from my project lead, but I backed my requests with usability testing as validation, leading to its implementation in the final product.
The app was approved by the CDCR and built. Deployment to 5,000+ incarcerated individuals is on hold pending a hardware contract resolution, which is outside anyone’s control at the moment. What exists is a rigorously tested, compliance-approved product waiting for the infrastructure to catch up.