< work

onHand

Good Lab, 2018

The care market in the UK caters incredibly poorly to low-level needs. 

Initially called ShareCare, this service was created to fill a gap in the market for low- cost, low-level care (things like helping with cleaning, changing lightbulbs, going to the shops, etc.) by using local security- cleared volunteers to provide services for a minimal admininstrative fee - opening up a professional carer market internally once we had a solid user-base.

After an 18-month trial ShareCare was at a turning point. I joined as it had been decided that a rename, a rebrand, a replatform to mobile, and a full service redesign was necessary for it to continue to operate. 

Volunteering to help older people, in their own homes, without the presence of a large organisation or an administrative staff, has one core problem - trust.

Challenge: How to build trust between volunteers and older people (and their families) who through a phone application?

Response: Listen to customers' fear of the 'C' word, radically redesign the criminal-record check, and focus on relatives. 

Fear of the idea of needing (or needing to pay for) "care" meant we failed to reach many of the people who needed the support of local volunteers the most. 

After a shortlisting process, involving key mentors from Facebook marketing as well as dozens of prospective and existing users, we decided to rebrand as onHand - removing the focus on 'care' and replacing it with a volunteer- and readiness-focus. 

By mapping the service as-was, we found significant scope for digitising mechanics like DBS (criminal record) checking, volunteer onboarding, the acquisition of older relatives of users, and donations and payments - and found existing services that met our needs to cut development time.

Journey-mapping brought us closer to a feasible and much-improved user journey, and user interviews refined our vision even further.

Prototyping with Sketch and Invision, testing on real and desired users, brought us to a new visual identity and user experience that hugely increased conversion.

This work reduced the cost to acquire a DBS-checked volunteer by 90%, massively improved the productivity of our community volunteers in running security checks, and finished the programme with as many verified volunteers in London as the Royal British Legion have nationwide.

Referral

Targeting the children of older people (who are typically the first affected by an increased caring requirement) meant creating a third onboarding route.

Giving younger relatives the ability to book support on behalf of their relatives opens a new audience savvier with technology and more comfortable with digital services and payments.

Verification

The criminal record checking process is arduous and outdated, requiring paper documentation to be posted and a wait time of up to three months before the records are available.

We totally redesigned our volunteer onboarding process around these constrains, reducing staff time and costs while increasing contact time; reducing mistakes in a very complex application; and improving the experience by integrating live chat and an ID checklist.

Security

Without doubt the most important factor in the success of the project is in establishing trust with older people and their relatives.

I designed a process to inform users of the benefits of DBS checking and one-to-one interviews, and reassure them that our safegaurding policies weren’t weaker on account of being smaller than most voluntary organisations

Onboarding

Designing a double-sided marketplace means taking particular care of two seperate and distinct onboarding journeys.

We researched and tested different journeys on both sides to reduce friction and give volunteers and older people (and their families) all the information and understanding they needed.