Discover

Research

The first step of this project involves gathering as much research as possible in order to better understand the design problem. This step is necessary to deeply empathise with our target users, before jumping straight into a solution, it is crucial to understand and gather data. The scope will include desk research on other social service agency, target demographic research, analysis on needs and desires of the end-users. Within time constraints, this process could last anywhere between a couple of days to weeks.

Research goals included

• Getting insights to users needs and preferences when looking for specific services
  
• Identifying pain points when selecting services
• Identifying all factors that impact the decision process for the users

methodology

• Data research
• Qualitative and Quantitave Analysis
• User Interviews

Secondary Research

Statistical Research was carried out to gain insights of the target demographics of social service organizations offering their services online and to uncover opportunities within the field.

About social services in australia

• The Department of Social Services (DSS) is a department of the Government of Australia charged with the responsibility for national policies and programs that help deliver a strong and fair society for all Australians. The department develops and implements social policy.
• Income security and support policies and programs for families with children, carers, the aged, people with   disabilities and people in hardship
• Advocates in Family relationship, Family and Children’s Support Services
• Supports Non-profit sector and volunteering
• Subsidize in Social housing, rent assistance and homelessness
• Arrangements for the settlement of migrants and humanitarian entrants, other than migrant child and migrant adult education

The Catholic Care Tasmania Landscape

• The social impact approach focuses on the integration of internal services and the strengthening of external partnerships, with a particular emphasis on place-based support.
• CatholicCare works to improve individual, family and community wellbeing.
• CatholicCare offers a range of complementary services, allowing for cross-service planning that is critical to effectively supporting the needs of people experiencing vulnerabilities.
• Wellbeing and change at the community level is complex. To address these complexities CatholicCare works across seven interconnected domains: Education, Housing, Safety, Economics, Health, Spirituality, Community Engagement.

USER Demographics

• Families in a low socioeconomic position with children aged 3 to 19 months, 2 to 3 years and 6 to 7 years were more likely to use economic or crisis support services such as Centrelink, employment and housing agencies, and charities such as the Salvation Army.
• It has long been recognised that people with multiple needs often receive multiple interventions of an uncoordinated nature that do not meet their individual needs in a personalised and targeted way
• How financial, employment, housing and crisis support services can supportively link families to other types of services is an area that requires further planning and investment.
• Families are less likely to use services that do not fit into their daily routines (including work hours), are not easy to get to or do not fit with their values (Spielberger et al. 2009).
• Migrant families, especially those whose residency was not in order, were particularly vulnerable to not receiving services. The kinds of services that certain groups or individuals may be willing to engage with may also vary.
• Parents who work, those dealing with a disability in a child, those with health issues including addiction, families who are homeless, parents who are teenagers, refugee families and travelling families.
• Reasons individuals or in ethnic group did not use social services are related to the interaction between barriers and facilitators. The barriers they identified were accessibility, social isolation, and lack of information or misinformation about the service. The facilitators of service use were both the appeal of the program and positive views of the program—when people knew someone who had used the program, they were more likely to use it themselves.

The Problem

Although understanding Laura’s  goals and needs is important, turning them into actionable problems statements is a crucial step to creating the right solutions for her needs:

Defining the Structure

Since the CCT categories features have been decided, I created a sitemap for the web flow to get an overview of how the stages will be prioritized, linked and labeled.

Low Fidelity Website and Mobile Prototype

In the earlier stage, during the collection of features from other similar non-governmental organizations, I've studied and referenced some of their layouts and took the best parts that worked well and implement to our wireframes. Figma was used for paper prototyping for user testing. 

Brand Guidelines and UI Kit

With sketches and wireframes, I designed this Hi-fi prototypes in Figma. Remaining true to the organization's attributes, I’ve chose the brand color to be in shades of blue. The color represents open communication and clarity of thought which was a great way of describing what Catholic Care's services can offer. Bright orange were chosen as secondary colors to express passion and happiness. I also made a simple concept for their logo, even though they will still use their own logo.

High-Fidelity Web and Mobile Prototype

From the research method, I discovered what factors were most important to users when searching for services of the organization. As this was a website redesign project, I began by collecting data through similar organization. There were surprising number of organizations that run similar projects in helping regional families on social challenges such as gambling, addiction, mental healthcare, domestic abuse, etc. 
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Comparing similar organizations enabled us to understand the kind of message being communicated and what kind of users we are focused on. Doing so, it gave us a starting point in terms of aspects to consider in our design process.

Primarily, I focus on how users can easily search for specific services. This was evidently obvious on the top of the website and most especially on the landing page on mobile.

For events, I provided a calendar where they can see the whole list for a specific month. However, this can also have an option to simplify the view by providing events list aside from a calendar view.

Deliver

Usability Testing

Once the prototype was ready, I prepared for usability testing in order to determine whether the website and responsive mobile works as intended with our target demographic. The test was conducted with 5 participants where they were given scenarios to complete specific tasks.
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The test objectives include:

• Testing the overall quality and ease of use and flow to complete a task
• Testing how users prefer to search for their specific service needs
• Testing how easily the user can book an appointment 
• Identifying any areas of frustrations, hesitation or confusion (pain points)

Tasks:

• Task 1: Give your first impression of the app and what you would do
• Task 2: Show how you would book an appointment for services provided
• Testing how easily the user can book an appointment 
• Identifying any areas of frustrations, hesitation or confusion (pain points)

Wins

• All participants and stakeholders felt that the website is intuitive and easy to use
• Some participants like the accessibility of colors and font size as they are pleasant and encouraging to use the website
• Participants like how they are feel prioritized with their issues
• Almost all participants rate their overall experience a 5/5

observations

• 70% of participants use the search field rather than the search icon
• Most participants read the 'What We Do' before proceeding to specific services
• Most participants felt confident booking an appointment using the inquiry form rather than calling the contact number

Key Insights:

• Some participants proposed to create a scheduled reminder for the preferred sitter
• Some participants were confused with the search bar and search icon

recommendations

• Creating an active community for markets and gatherings
• Participant would like to know about activities in CCT in Social Media.

next steps

There are still things that can be tested and improved on, including but not limited to:

• Conducting usability test on the revised prototype to see if it works well
• More testing, iterating and covering more features that were not implemented due to time constraints like Donation page
• Considering a chatbot especially for accessibility in the future will be great help for users