IDES 244 – Reconciliation Project – Rationale

For my reconciliation project I had chosen to do:

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action #17 

“We call upon all levels of government to enable residential school survivors and their families to reclaim names changed by the residential school system by waiving administrative costs for a period of five years for the name-change process and the revision of official identity documents, such as birth certificates, passports, driver’s licenses, health cards, status cards, and social insurance numbers.”

Regarding the waiving of fees for the reclamation of names of indigenous peoples affected by residential schooling.

This awareness campaign would become known as the Name Recovery Initiative. This name was chosen to seem innocuous to users about the project’s ultimate goal.

The logo was also designed as an homage to names. The X and _ symbolize signature areas many documents require. 

The visual style was to be scifi but minimal/clinical at the same time. Using myself as a measuring stick, I tend to trust websites with minimal design work on them to have an air of confidence thus leading me to subconsciously have more trust to put in my information.

The campaign strategy was to lure unsuspecting users into a site seemingly about cybersecurity. Only to have their names be targeted by an emulation of a ransomware attack, essentially taking their names hostage for a price before leading them to an informational page.

This is to give users a similar experience to that indigenous peoples, whose names have been compromised by residential schooling, have gone through. Thus evoking a sense of empathy. 

The call to action is a request that the user writes to their representative member of parliament to push for awareness and a sense of urgency to resolve the issue.

The biggest obstacle with this project was the initial hook to get targets to enter their name into the search field. I still feel that this area could be greatly improved.

Given more time, visuals and type treatment could have used more massaging before final hand in. However, deadlines are deadlines and I am quite pleased with my concept. I hope it comes across smoothly.

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