Go HAM! Help A Mate is a platform that helps you better support your community after a flood.
Shit happened. Here is how you can help
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Volunteer with your community
Help us assist survivors
Help us reach your loved ones
Go HAM! Help A Mate
Design Research Compendium | Master of Design Innovation & Technology (RMIT)
Speculative design meets social innovation in the face of climate disaster
The Opportunity
As climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of floods, traditional emergency response systems are proving too bureaucratic, slow, and disconnected to meet the needs of communities on the ground. This gap is especially visible in places like Lismore, NSW where the 2022 floods overwhelmed formal systems and left residents to rely on each other.
During the Lismore floods, a surge of spontaneous volunteers, often young, digitally connected individuals - mobilized through social media platforms to deliver real-time rescue, recovery, and aid. This project asks:
What if design could help equip and coordinate this goodwill?
What would community-led recovery look like if supported by the right tools, rituals, and systems?
Design Approach
Speculative & Critical Design: Reimagining aid systems that don't yet exist — but urgently should.
Community Ethnography: Grounded in the lived experiences of flood survivors and spontaneous volunteers.
Visual & Systems Storytelling: Mapping informal rescue networks and prototyping alternative recovery infrastructures.
Flood events around the world from 2022-2023
Intervention
Outcome
The project proposes Go HAM!, a decentralized aid coordination platform designed with and for spontaneous volunteers. It repositions young people as capable, ethical first responders — not just “helpers.”
Key concepts include:
Role-based deployment teams (check-in, cleanup, hot kitchen).
A digital platform matching skills to needs in real time.
Trauma-informed, culturally aware training and engagement protocols.
Go HAM! is presented as a prototype and provocation – a vision for resilient futures where recovery is locally driven, ethically designed, and socially intelligent.
It challenges dominant, top-down narratives of disaster response and reframes spontaneous volunteerism as a vital civic infrastructure. One that design can empower.
