I-Ally
Created by family caregivers for family caregivers. A complete redesign of I-Ally, a web app created to provide community, peer support, and mutual aid to family caregivers.
🙋🏻♀️ What I did
As the sole product designer, I conducted user and market research, strategized, coordinated, pitched, and redesigned I-Ally within less than 3 months. I worked closely with the stakeholders and an off-shore developer to guide the product vision and create a stronger value proposition.
🔍 Problem
I-Ally connects the family caregiver to others who may have experienced emotional and physiological stress associated with caregiving. People expressed high hopes for the app but did not feel engaged or supported.
How might we create an experience where caregivers feel heard, understood and empowered?
💡 Solution
If we create a safe and brave space where people can freely express themselves, give support and receive support from others, then adoption and retention of the app will improve.
There are over 50 million caregivers in America alone.
AARP, National Alliance for Caregiving, May 14, 2020
19% are providing unpaid care to an adult with adult with health or functional needs
23% say caregiving has made their own health worse
61% of family caregivers are also working
“I think we just need a better onboarding experience and better resources!”
My client came to me with great assumptions as to why I-Ally may not be performing to her expectations and what were some key areas of development. She expressed that as a millennial caregiver herself, she was passionate about the resources she was able to garner for the web app and its potential users.
In order to validate her assumptions and better understand the product, I conducted user interviews and usability tests on the current experience. After gathering the qualitative data from both caregivers and non-caregivers nationwide, I was able to create affinity maps and spot the trends that were occurring. I listed out all the main trends and had key stakeholders vote and prioritize the top few to move forward in MVP.
Key insights from user interviews:
“I experience extreme caregiver burnout.”
“I want to be heard, understood, and empathized with.”
“Hiring extra caregiving services is too expensive.”
Key insights from usability tests:
Overwhelming amount of information and resources
Product and services were unclear
People were not sure what they were supposed to do on the web app
Design Workshop
Now that I had some insights from the existing web app and caregiving experience, I facilitated a design workshop with stakeholders, caregivers, and design colleagues. It was an amazing opportunity to create some initial ideation, some of which included:
Using gamification to encourage people to share their stories and/or offer support
Being matched with an accountability or support buddy
Support groups based on specific commonalities (e.g. caring for someone with Alzheimer’s)
Feature Prioritization
We had so many great ideas but we had to narrow down our focus for MVP. I facilitated a feature prioritization session with the stakeholders and after much thought and consideration, we all agreed upon fostering a sense of community where caregivers can feel heard, understood, and empathized with.
Sign up / login experience
🔍 Initial discoveries
Through user testing, I discovered that users had friction with the original sign up process. The CTA buttons were not clear and users had to input the same information twice.
💡 Proposed solution
The focus was to create a simple and straight forward onboarding process. I removed the images that may cause distraction and included multiple entry points to log in and/or sign up.
In addition, the founder and I included community guidelines and some terms & conditions that people would have to agree to before proceeding on to the experience.
Helpful onboarding tour
🔍 Initial discoveries
Users were extremely confused and uncertain about the capabilities and purpose of the app. They did not know what to do and often times quit the experience at this point.
💡 Proposed solution
I created an onboarding tour to quickly explain the support, resources and services that the app offers. I wanted to lay out clear expectations for users to reduce confusion and frustration.
Offer and receive support
🔍 Initial experience
The intention of the “Ask for Help” feature was to provide emotional and/or physical support to those in need.
However, there were technical difficulties when putting in help requests and a lack of resources and people to provide support. Rather than helping, this feature created more friction, confusion and frustration to users.
💡 Proposed solution
Community and peer support were what caregivers expressed a deep desire for. I created a new community forum feature where users can ask for support, offer support, simply share their thoughts or get advice from experts. This feature was designed to be a more casual and less intimidating way to give and offer support.
Hand-selected & easily accessible resources
🔍 Initial experience
I-Ally offers a lot of resources for family caregivers but it was a bit overwhelming to some users. There was an option to view the details and contact each specific resource, but some of the buttons did not work.
💡 Proposed solution
Through card sorting, I categorized each resource into groupings and designed an interface that is less cluttered and more inviting for users to discover and explore the many resources available.
Next steps
Conduct usability tests
Identify key performance indicators to monitor
Move forward with development process in sandbox
Create a new MVP for the website to maintain branding throughout
Reconsider value prop to make it stronger
Get in touch.
If you want to chat about all things design, don’t hesitate to reach out! 😊