Designing a Hybrid Learning and Support Portal

Context & Brief - SNEHA’s GARiMA is part of its Academy initiative - an online resource and training portal for counsellors, social workers and community mental health providers supporting survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. The platform launched in 2022 with a multilingual (English, Hindi, Marathi) “package of care” offering guidelines, video modules, screening tools, and counselling session scripts. By late 2023, it had expanded into a fully digital training and support hub, co-developed with global health research partners (such as UCL).

SNEHA approached us to design the user experience and interface of GARiMA, transforming it from a static, offline knowledge base into a supportive, usable, scalable platform for field counsellors and community workers.

Research & Insight - We began by mapping the needs of counsellors and frontline staff:

• Many users would access under time pressure or emotional stress, so content must be navigable, immediately actionable, and easy to digest.
• Users had varying levels of digital familiarity, device quality, and internet reliability. The UX needed to be resilient to these constraints.
• Multilingual delivery was critical: content had to be equally usable in English, Hindi, and Marathi.
• sers might want to browse training modules, but also quickly access practical “first response” checklists, referral contact lists, and session scripts in crisis situations.

Design Solution - We approached GARiMA as a hybrid learning and support portal, focused on speed, clarity, and emotional safety.

• Modular content structure - We divided the “Package of Care” into linked modules and topic pathways like “First Response,” “Psychosocial Support,” and “Referral and Linkage” that users can browse like mini-courses, but also jump into the specific tools they need in a moment.
• Clean, calm interface - We designed a simple, uncluttered layout with clear categorisation, consistent typographic hierarchy, and use of icons and visual cues to help the user orient themselves quickly.
• Just-in-time tools panel - We ensured quick access to tools like screening checklists, referral directories, session-script PDFs, and “next-steps” prompts was available at all times via a persistent tools menu or sidebar, so a counsellor in crisis mode doesn’t have to dig through the training modules.
• Design for low-bandwidth environments - We incorporated lightweight UI elements, optimised media handling (compressed videos, optional downloads), offline fallback content for key resources, and progress-bookmarking so users can resume interrupted sessions.

We collaborated closely with SNEHA’s Academy team and their implementation partners, refining information architecture and wireframes based on pilot user feedback. The interface was prototyped in-browser and tested with community counsellors, leading to several rounds of simplification: menu structures were flattened, video segments trimmed, and the just-in-time tools panel made visually persistent. Multilingual versions were released simultaneously, with consistent usability testing in each language.

Outcome & Impact - GARiMA is now live as a go-to digital toolkit and training portal used by SNEHA counsellors, NGO implementation partners, and global health research collaboratives.