[ AttainAble ]
[Info]
Social, Employment and Wellbeing App
Sector: Health/Wellbeing/Social/Employment
The AttainAble initiative was to explore ways to enrich the lives of many people who are chronically ill but have a world of experience to offer to a broad community. The goal was to develop a platform to connect people from all walks of life, focusing mainly but not solely on people who are chronically ill.
I was part of an ambitious project to design a platform which fosters real, meaningful connections, both personally and professionally, is inclusive, educational and provides a safe & positive space to network, socialise, support, find support and discover resources tailored to your unique needs. This would be the first app of its kind.
My Role:
-
Team Research Lead.
I successfully led a team of 10 UX/UI designers in a fast-paced, 4-week design sprint to develop a user-centered solution.
-
Stake holder engagement
-
Research
-
Leading meetings
-
Creating and actioning timelines
-
Conducted user research from beginning to end
-
Interviews
-
Competitor analysis
-
Affinity mapping
-
Synthesising and analysing all data
-
Customer journey map
-
User stories/personas/HMW's
-
Ideation
-
Presentations
-
IA
-
User flows
-
Handover to the design team
-
UI/lo-fi and mid-fi wire framing
-
Hi-fi prototype*
*I designed and created the hi-fi prototypes after the 4 week project was completed. Due to time constraints the client opted for higher quality low-fi wireframing meaning the team didn't move into the hi-fi prototype phase.
Key Goals:
-
Bridge the gap between chronically ill and allies through social connections, employment, education and health and wellbeing
-
Maintain & build relationships
-
Educate users on chronic illness (both chronically ill and allies)
-
Incorporate the ability to ask and provide help
-
System to help manage energy/exhaustion levels
-
Ensure the platform makes people feel comfortable with vulnerability
-
Finding employment that allows for flexibility
The Solution:
After conducting and analysing the research, we found that to create multiple platforms wouldn't remedy the main issue being that people suffering with chronic illnesses lack energy - both mentally and physically - therefore not possessing the capacity to be managing multiple apps, so building one app was the most fitting way to assist the user.
A key finding was "The Spoon Theory" - this is a system which people who suffer with chronic illness use to track their daily energy levels - in short, they start with a set amount of hypothetical spoons each day and delegate a "spoon" each time a task is complete, so when they are low on spoons this translates to them being low on energy, which lets themselves and people around them know they may not have the capacity to complete tasks or attend social events.
Family members and friends of chronically ill also suffer mentally and physically due to taking on more of the day-to-day work load to help assist, so the app would be educational to them via resources like financial assistance, mediation and other positive activities and resources.
This insight became the foundation of the app, and in doing so we created a system which benefits not only chronically ill but able bodies too, which solved the pain point of "bridging the gap".
The app is a hybrid platform which fuses the key pain points into one, easy to use system:
-
Social feed and messaging
-
A digital form of the "Spoons Theory" to track energy, set tasks and delegate spoons to tasks and activities performed throughout a day.
-
The ability to share spoons by offering to help complete a task (pick up the post etc)
-
Employment section catered to capability and capacity
-
Educational resources section for chronically ill and Able Bodies
-
Online activities - Pilates, yoga, meditation, talks etc
Future Forecasting:
-
Increase social connections for people suffering with CI
-
Increase potential organic romantic connections
-
Improve the ability for CI and allies to feel comfortable asking for help
-
Realistic job opportunities for people suffering with CI and Allies who may want more flexible working situations
-
A reliable platform for employers to create job openings on for flexible and part time work as well as full time positions to cater to non-CI
-
The first platform of it's kind to meld into one location a resource library for CI and allies to leverage according to their individual situation
-
Improved awareness of friends and families energy levels - improved relationships and stress.
Research
Research consisted of one to one interviews with people who suffer with chronic illness and allies. This gave us an incredible amount of data to move forward with. Including allies in the research process gave us great insight to be able to work toward fixing the problem of a dissconnect between chronically ill and allies - helping us the "bridge the gap" through an app.
Research included: Affinity mapping, competitor analysis, interviews, personas, customer journey maps, empathy mapping, How Might We's
Presentation:
Mid-way client presentation. This stakeholder meeting was to present our key findings from the first 2 weeks of deep research and to inform the client on the potential next steps and the direction we saw the app going in. This was the point we clarified with the client that we would recommend moving forward with a single app with the social, employment and wellbeing aspects married into the one location as opposed to 4 seperate apps. This decision was heavily made from the data we recieved.
Low-fi Wireframes:
Low-fi development of creating social connections, creating and booking events, resources and employment/creating a user job profile.
Onboarding:
Opening screens, log in process, user profiles, spoon levels, social profile, conditions and work profiles
Mid-fi - Communicating a need for help:
Users (friends and family) can opt to help or assist other users with tasks to avoid burnout. Users can easily ask for help via friends and family to save energy for other more pressing tasks.
Mid-fi:
Creating an event and inviting users to join.
Hi-fi Prototype:
Hi-fi prototypes of onboarding and the user dashboard. The dashboard instantly gives the user an update on their spoon level and the option to check/set tasks and to donate spoons to others.
Following this there is key realestate for social events - having the ability to attend tasks or feel like they are still invited to events was highlighted in the user research multiple times.
There is then a slider of job matches which is updated in real time and leading into the lower section are tiles linking to relevant articles and information which again is updated in real time.