Website Design and Development

The Yoorrook Justice Commission is the first formal truth-telling inquiry into the injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria. As the Commission drew to a close in June 2025, there was a clear and urgent need to ensure its work would live on: accessible, intact, and deeply respectful.

Tundra was engaged to design and develop Yoorrook’s Official Public Record (OPR) website, a lasting digital platform to house the Commission’s findings, stories, and recommendations. More than just an archive, the website needed to honour the voices of those who shared their truths, serve the needs of diverse audience groups, and support real-world impact through learning, advocacy, and action.

Our challenge was not just technical or creative, it was cultural, emotional, and civic. We needed to build a platform that could support truth, understanding, and transformation, while ensuring that First Peoples’ experiences and voices remained at the centre of everything we designed.

Firstly, we conducted in-depth workshopping with Yoorrook, and research with First Peoples, policymakers, educators, and the Victorian public to listen deeply to their needs and expectations in relation to not just the content, tone, and language of the website, but also its features, visual presentation, and any other cultural considerations to guide the direction of the site.

We then completed a comprehensive audit of Yoorrook's existing website and reviewed thousands of artefacts, including submissions, evidence, hearings and reports, to identify content gaps, strategic opportunities, and requirements for accessibility, structure, and tone.

Next, we developed a purpose-built information architecture and content strategy, including SEO guidance and page-level content briefs to support trauma-informed, culturally safe writing across the site.

Finally, we created wireframes and high-fidelity designs, tested them with both First Peoples and non–First Peoples participants, and developed a fully responsive, accessible website that houses the Commission’s Official Public Record and supports truth-telling, education, and action well into the future.

The project was delivered across three key phases: Discovery, Design + Content, and Delivery. Each stage was carefully shaped through close collaboration with Yoorrook and guided by First Peoples’ voices, ensuring that cultural sensitivity and long-term impact remain at the heart of the work.

Discovery

From the outset, we approached Discovery with sensitivity and clarity of purpose. Working closely with the Commission and its staff, we facilitated a collaborative and iterative process shaped by deep listening, respectful dialogue, and audience-informed design thinking.

We ran a series of workshops with the Yoorrook team to align on goals, co-create design principles, and explore what a culturally respectful and empowering experience should look like. These sessions provided the foundation for everything that followed.

We then conducted empathy mapping activities with internal and external stakeholders to better understand the distinct needs, goals, challenges and cultural considerations for each audience group. This helped us humanise the different user journeys and identify how the website could serve them meaningfully.

In-depth one-on-one interviews followed, with First Peoples, policymakers, educators, and allies from across Victoria. These conversations gave us space to listen deeply and understand how truth-telling, education, advocacy, and policy reform intersect—and how a digital platform could support those goals.

Despite the differences between these audiences, all shared a common expectation: that the website must be welcoming, empowering, respectful, easy to use, and above all, led by Mob.

Rather than retrofitting a generic design approach, we shaped the strategy to match the Commission’s distinct values and responsibilities.

Content was another critical focus for Discovery. We audited Yoorrook’s existing digital content and thousands of collected materials (submissions, hearings, evidence, reports) and compared this with emerging content needs uncovered during research to find gaps and opportunities, helping us plan a more engaging and effective website.

Design

Moving into Design, we shifted our focus to experience design, shaping intuitive user flows and exploring how the Yoorrook brand could be extended into a respectful and accessible digital environment. Through information architecture and wireframes, we designed a site structure that would guide users through rich, multimedia content in a logical, guided, and considered way. The structure we developed is not just user-friendly, it’s story-driven. It meets visitors where they are, starting with accessible context and guiding them deeper into Yoorrook’s work, the truths collected, and a vision for the future.

The visual design builds on the Commission’s existing identity and applies it with care across every component and interaction. We partnered with First Nations artist Emma Bamblett, who crafted a large set of custom symbols and illustrations that brought the Yoorrook identity to life across the entire website while also providing significant meaning and visual context for First Peoples’ audiences.

Our designs were also tested and shaped by feedback from First Nations and Non-First Nations people in Victoria through moderated usability testing sessions, helping us carefully refine the site’s interface and visual design to ensure greater impact, cultural alignment, and usability for all visitors.

Content

To support Yoorrook content writers, we developed a clear content and SEO strategy. This helped ensure the website had a clear purpose and message, was easy to find, engaged a wide range of audiences, and kept truth-telling and First Nations voices at its core—supported by thoughtful writing and trauma-informed principles.

This was further strengthened by the creation of clear and comprehensive content briefing templates for every page of the website. These briefs include guidance on page purpose, messaging, structure, design and layout, user journeys, and more. This helped the Yoorrook content team complete copywriting activities much faster than starting from a blank page.

Delivery

During the Delivery phase, Tundra led development through a series of structured two-week development sprints, with CMS configuration, QA and UAT processes carefully managed to ensure the final product is stable, high-performing and easy to maintain. The project will conclude with documentation, analytics implementation, and website launch, ensuring Yoorrook’s Official Public Record is ready to live on as a trusted and enduring source of truth.

The Official Public Record website ensures that the historic truth-telling work of the Yoorrook Justice Commission lives on as a trusted, accessible and emotionally resonant resource. It creates a permanent, public record of what was shared, what was learned, and what must change, and places this in the hands of all Victorians.

Importantly, the platform contributes to First Peoples’ self-determination, by supporting Indigenous stewardship of records, histories and cultural narratives. The digital archive will be held by the State Library of Victoria as caretaker under the guidance of the Victorian Indigenous Research Centre and the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, marking the first time records created by and for First Peoples will sit outside the State Collection.

The website is more than an archive, it is a legacy of courage, resilience and resistance. A resource for educators, policymakers, advocates and community. And a reminder that truth-telling does not end with the Commission. It must live on, and be acted upon, by all of us.