Reliable care, when you need it.

Case Study: Alice Care
On Demand Home Care

Updating an existing product to improve usability and reduce customer service calls.

Alice Care provides comprehensive Home Care services on an on demand basis. Alice care had an existing product but wanted to improve usability. They were catering to a 50+ audience of primary caregivers. Their customer support team was receiving high numbers of customers reaching out to make appointments by phone because the existing interface lacked some critical features that allowed users to complete tasks through the app.

2 User Portals:

Customers:
Customers were majority 50+ primary caregivers of seniors 60+. Most caregivers were looking for occasional assistance, but many were also seeking reoccurring service.

Care Providers:
Care providers are employees of Alice Care, and were available on demand of prescheduled. Providers needed to be able to accept jobs, communicate availability, and view their upcoming appointments..

Our Process:

1. Discover

Research- Analysis of the existing product to be come familiar with current live version.
Accessibility- Consider what is the range of accessibility we need to provide for our target clients. What has already been implemented, and what needs to be added?
Competitor Analysis- Review competitor products to identify product position within marketplace.
User Interviews- Test existing users to identify target users needs, behaviors, and goals. Examine pain points in the current app that must be addressed.

2. Define

Persona Development- Develop 3 personas for our 3 user types: Client, Caregiver, and Admin
User Journey Map- take into account of users mental models and the flow of interaction and possible points of contact for all three user types
MVP: Identify what features need to be designed or redesigned for launch
Information Architecture- define the overall structure and navigation. How do all features interact with each other.

3. Design

Wire Frames- Low fidelity mockups that explore revised structure and navigation of application
High Fidelity Mockups- Finalized mockups of all features.
Interactive Prototype- Connect interactive elements in a click through Figma prototype
Usability Test- Prototype will be tested with several users. Based on results, wireframes and prototypes are refined and polished and retested until there is minimal friction for users.

Identifying & resolving pain points

High customer service call frequency

To define any pain points of the existing product I spoke with several user types. I interviewed Alice care admins who relayed the information that they were receiving many calls a day from customers who were having trouble using the app. Many of their problems were easily solved, but the app in its current form didn't enable users to change their services once they were booked. Rebooking would cancel the appointment and a new provider would have to be scheduled. If it was within the cancelation fine window, then customers would be charged for canceling. This lead to high frequency of calls occurring to change services, a feature that could easily be added to the redesign.

To resolve this issue I created a new state that allowed appointments to be moved to a "pending approval state" while the new and modified services were reviewed by the assigned provider. This allowed the appointment to stay booked with the provider who accepted the appointment, and for the customer to make last minute changes to their appointment without calling customer service.

Apts History and Upcoming Apts

In the existing system there were unique views of all three apt types, Active, upcoming, and past. This became confusing and frustrating. Making an appointment was also cumbersome with a sliding date bar if the available booking windows instead of a calendar or date selector. A lot of these similar but different interactions could be consolidated and simplified into one construct.

The solution to this issue was to unify all three functions into a calendar construct, with a daily appointment view on the home page. This allowed for users to see active, view past see future appointments. The calendar also allowqed for a more natural appointment creation process instead of the sliding date bar.

Provider availability

IN the original product, providers were given a general availability screen that indicated their typical availability. This became an issue for providers because many had schedules that changed weekly and were not consistent on a regular basis. This led to them not seeing jobs they would have liked to take but were not presented with because they would have to change their weekly availability to pick up an extra shift.

To make the provider availability real time, I developed a prompt for them to fill their availability out upon daily login. The selections would would carry over from the previous week, and be on a sliding day scale of 1 week in future so availability would always be captured on real time. This allowed providers to easily adjust availability and for providers and customers to be matched better on a weekly basis.