Launch of new carer messaging tool, unlocking key MME accounts and achieving 75% adoption across eligible users
RESEARCH - PRODUCT STRATEGY - USER EXPERIENCE
Empower carers to deliver safe person centred care
Carers rely on having the information they need in the right moments. We would need to build a tool that would allow them to deliver safe, person centred care to vulnerable older adults in a fast paced, ever changing working environment.
Help care agencies to be operationally efficient
Poor communication practices can be expensive and time consuming for agencies. We needed to find a way to help agencies increase productivity and reduce costs at the same time. Improving their chances of future success.
Deliver on time and unlock revenue for Birdie
This feature was deemed a “must have” for our largest care agency and potentially blocking significant revenue for us (Birdie). In addition, a tight deadline was set to get this feature ready before the go live date.
Care agencies use WhatsApp, email, and SMS to communicate with carers, which introduced it’s own set of problems. I conducted research with agencies and carers to get a deeper understanding.
1
Poor communication erodes trust and confidence
Poor communication between office staff and carers can have far-reaching consequences, impacting carers' confidence, trust, job satisfaction, and ultimately, the quality of care provided to older adults.
2
Constant and rapid changes lead to errors
Due to the nature of social care, changes are happening by the minute. Medication updates, hospital admissions, carers calling in sick are all examples of where agencies need to quickly adapt to ensure the quality of care and safety of older adults isn’t at risk.
3
Older adults privacy and dignity at risk with current comms tools
When carers use their personal WhatsApp, email or SMS accounts to discuss sensitive information about older adults they’re increasing the risk of information being seen by unintended recipients. This is a breach of the older adults privacy and dignity.
4
Audit trails are essential for legal compliance
It is difficult for agencies to keep track of messages when they’re stored in multiple places. If something goes wrong and there's no proof of communications, agencies are exposed to risks such as lawsuits, regulatory investigations, and reputational damage.
I led a pre-mortem with my team to identify potential hurdles. To reduce complexity and save time, we decided to make the messaging service one-way (agency to carers). Despite having to make tradeoffs to meet our deadline, we were confident we could still address the core issues and minimise risks to both the project deadline and, more importantly, the wellbeing of older adults.
Design approach
In social care, where mistakes can affect the safety of older adults, it was crucial to develop a simple, intuitive tool that offers peace of mind to office staff and carers.
Contextual messaging
The messaging centre is displayed in a “pop over” side sheet that can be accessed from any screen. This enabled office staff to reference multiple sources of data while composing their message.
Compliance and peace of mind
To alleviate care managers' worries about who has and hasn’t seen their messages, I included read receipts and a history of all sent messages in my designs.
Adaptable UI
The side sheet component can be adapted for various views to suit the users needs.
Informed but not interrupted
We built a new notification centre in the app to replace non-urgent and disruptive phone calls from the care agency. This allows carers to receive updates without being disturbed or distracted from their caregiving duties.
To ensure we were making meaningful improvements we adopted a “continuous learning” mindset. Small experiments enabled us to get richer data and a more rounded view of how the messaging centre was being used.
More relevant message types
A few weeks into the beta, we noticed 24% of messages were categorised as "Other." After analysing the content, we introduced more relevant categories, reducing "Other" messages by 50%. This also revealed potential opportunities to add value, such as facilitating visit cover through the app.
Reduction in callback requests
A significant amount of messages were being used to ask the carers to “call the office back”, after some investigation we realised that agencies couldn’t say everything they needed to say within the 150 character limit . We increased the limit from 150 to 300 and saw a 33% drop in callback requests.
Direct feedback
We embedded a feedback link directly into the feature so we had a steady stream of qualitative data. This provided us with a clearer understanding of how users perceived the feature.
Workforce experience vision
Crafting the strategic direction for the new Workforce Experience domain
Mobile app UX improvements
Using a data driven approach to improve the mobile app NPS by 28% over 6 months
Made in Framer by me with
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