Be My Eyes Case Study
Micro Help Volunteering
Who is Be My Eyes?
Be My Eyes is a service which connects blind or low sighted volunteers for visual assistance in everyday tasks ranging from changing a lightbulb to making a cup of tea.
To date over 5 million volunteer provide valuable support as Be My Eyes which shows the popularity and success of this app. This social action service is about inclusion, accessibility and giving those who need it a trustworthy service using skilled volunteers.
Overview of our brief
The brief is expand the user base of the service to a broader audience by looking at the core needs related to micro help. Be My Eyes have a hunch that people who look for ‘how to help’ Youtube videos might like a more personalised and tailored experience and that’s where we come in.
User Interviews
We carried out 4 interviews and the following insights. The main takeaways from this was that volunteers need to know what they are talking about and for this advice to be practical and broken down into steps.
Be My Eyes Podcast
Keen to explore why Be My Eyes matters to those who need it. Additional research led to a Podcast hosted by blind and low vision presenters. Their stories, their challenges and why Be My Eyes makes a different was both inspiring to hear and led our group discuss key issues around accessibility and an intuitive navigation system.
Competitive Analysis
From these insights we carried out plus and delta competitive analysis looking at 4 companies who offer similar services. From this it is clear people valued a quick and reliable service by skilled professionals who have been rated for their skills and tend to avoid organisation with bad customer service and appointment cancellations.
Comparative Analysis
So what are the key barrier users have when going online for help? We did a feature inventory comparative analysis looking at Tiktok, Instagram and Uber and the following slide illustrates that both Chatbox and ‘how it works’ functions are missing from all 3 services and therefore considerations for our design thinking.
SKILL-SHARING (OPPORTUNITY)
So how do we turn these problems into opportunities. The gap in the market we identified focused on Skill-sharing. The experience can be seen as a circular journey where by the end the user has gained the skills necessary to be a volunteer.
As I talk through our design journey you’ll find out how we incorporated this into our process and prototype.
HMW AND AFFINITY MAPPING
Our assumption led us to think about How Might We. We timeboxed this and come up with How Might We statements, drawing our research and interview insights. We Affinity Mapped our thoughts and took away 7 key How Might We statements from this:
HME…
- reward our volunteers?
- recruit new volunteers?
- encourage skill share?
- display expertise
- ensure protection and safety in our users?
- ensure immediacy?
- make is accessible?
Persona
So, meet Dan Tawls!
Dan is a 33-year-old Account Manager and looking for a way to get quick, expert information on his various hobbies. He already uses the online tools however becomes frustrated with no real time feedback. Dan needs to know that what he is being told is relevant and trustworthy.
Problem Statement 1
We synthesised this persona information into our problem statement being that “Dan needs a way to get immediate and trustworthy help with jobs around the house in order to complete specific tasks”
User Journey
As we know Dan spends his spare time learning about bike mechanics and photography. He wants to go on a bike ride but has noticed that his chain is stuck and found the solution extremely frustrating. He doesn’t know who to call and ended up giving up.
User Flow
So, we started to solutionise. We created a user flow. Dan will start by opening the app, clicking the ‘I Need Help’ button and deciding whether he wants to select a category or voice his problem using the speaker function. Having selected a category he will select what it is in particular he needs help with, and be connected to a volunteer of his choice. Having completed the call he will choose whether he has time to leave feedback, endorsing his volunteer for their skills and help, and finishing there.
Sketching
We did some crazy 8’s, starting with the homepage, followed by a profile. We discussed these ideas and iterated on them. We then each sketched our user flow and voted on them by highlighting on our favourite parts, as evident on the screen.
Body Storming
When doing these crazy 8’s we came across an issue that we assumed might be a problem, when in a rush. The problem of having your hands free to hold the phone, while solving the issue.
We tested this with the simple task of making a cup of tea with 4 users. We found that one user propped his phone up on the side of the kitchen. This is obviously a major issue that we had to consider as many tasks are when people are outside, such a changing a car tyre, so how were they going to prop their phone up, if at all? This was something we had to think about going into our wireframing.
Initial Wireframes
Following on from the Crazy 8’s and body storming we created a medium fidelity wireframe. We gave our users the task of logging in, connecting with a user and checking their notifications following this call.
Usability Testing
Having completed this we tested our wireframes on 12 users all whom tried to overcome issues online recently. As you can all see on the screen the red markers are just some of the main points we changed following these tests.
The first pair of screens, show iterations on our wording in the speak function. We made the replies clear, solutionising any problems that might occur with accents, as well as frustrations with immediacy.
The second pairing displays our choice to enlarge our camera screen. 50% of our users were confused with the smaller screens, they were unsure as to what they were. It was a design decision we made to make the users screen larger than the volunteers. This is because it is important the user sees what they are showing the volunteer, to put a finger on what really is wrong, especially with a fiddly task, such as Dan’s changing a bike chain.
The third pairing shows many iterations we made to the connection screen. Firstly many of our users were unsure even if Dave was online, leading us to add an active bubble, as seen on many familiar apps and sites.
Problem Statement 2
Our iterations led to changes in the problem statement which now reads “Dan needs to get immediate and trustworthy help with micro-tasks because he is not confident in doing so himself, however he finds the current methods of getting relevant and reliable information to be a chore”
Moodboards, and Colours
To find the colours for this project we started with a tone of journey, and mood-boarded images and colours that related to trustworthiness and confidence. We used inter as the font because it’s what Be My Eyes uses to keep that brand symmetry.
We settled on blues for an air of trust, greens for calm and yellow because of its energising nature, and then did another mini design studio to see how these colours could relate to the prototype.
Desirability Testing
Once we had 4 separate colour ways we decided we wanted to do a desirability test to make sure that users would use the same words we would to describe the tone of the different colour options.
Testing Outcomes
Even with a small number of responses we got to a fairly unanimous answer. The feedback for Option 2 was incredibly positive, using words we wanted to describe the brand such as trustworthy and approachable. With this feedback from the surveys we took this colour pallet into the high fidelity prototype, and we’d like to introduce you to the newest offering from Be My Eyes, Be My Mind:
Welcome to By My Eyes
The name was a happy accident when I misspoke during one of our discussions and it stuck with all of us, and we thought it represented this evolution from helping people to see, to now helping people with all manner of tasks they don’t know how to do.
HiFi Prototype
Our high fidelity run through touched on all the key functions from our research and insights. Full run through of all our high fidelity functions is available on request.
Iterations, next steps and personal reflections
For the next steps we’d like to
- Add a ‘hold’ option to the phone call so people can pause but not have to hang up
- Sketch out and test the search flow, as a lot of the users wanted to use the search function rather than selecting a category
- Build out the rewards system for the volunteers, perhaps based on reaching milestones in how much they’ve been endorsed
My reflections and learning on this project
As a team, we bonded well from the offset. Using the UX structure we we had gone through on previous projects allowed us to follow the necessary steps leading us to the final project.
Our skills complimented each other. For me, good UI starts with good user research. I want to understand why this product matters and what different its makes to its users. Scarlet and Chris were brilliant at taking these insights, putting the various components of the project together and driving us forward with sketches mid-fidelity and testing. Combined, we complimented each other.
My learning style is delve into the research, put together designs based on these insights in my own time and present back what I’ve done to the rest of the team.
The collaborations therefore using Miro and Figma in real time was challenging to begin with however I am glad I perused this. Whether working on time-bound tasks or taking on the crazy 8s challenges, these quicker exercises prevents designers from over thinking and will greatly benefit my practice on future tasks.
Useful collaborative designs is the result of tiny lightbulb moments so enjoy the play, ambiguity and discovery James, I keep telling myself.
Thank you for listening.