After a disaster, people interact with businesses, governments and community sectors. Sometimes it’s a positive experience, sometimes it’s not. This design research, following the North Queensland Monsoon Disaster of 2019, set out to understand and evaluate how the service and support ecosystem impacted on the local community’s experience and ability to respond and recover.

Applying a human-centred design approach, it identified actionable improvements that could better support communities to recover and thrive when faced with a disaster in the future.

The collaborative focus also brought organisations together across sectors, building trust and loyalty, forging stronger bonds with a focus on cross disciplinary design research.