Ayd Cares: On-demand home care
A platform to empower Caregivers and Personal Support Workers by offering the flexibility to manage care in a safe and convenient way.
What is Ayd Cares?
We were introduced to the project of creating a responsive web design for Ayd Cares. Ayd Cares is the largest and most trusted home care network in Canada. Through their platform, a client (caregiver) can coordinate and communicate with a Personal Support Worker (PSW) to manage care, wellness and improve quality of care for their loved ones.
Understanding the challenge.
OPPORTUNITY
For a better understanding of this project, it is imperative that the difference between them is explained.
CAREGIVER
Refers to the family, friends, neighbours - who provide critical and ongoing care without pay, for loved ones in need.
PERSONAL SUPPORT WORKER
Refers to individuals who provide assistance to the elderly and individuals with disabilities with pay.
Ayd Cares was built on the idea that there is an influx of PSWs in space, however, they are under pressure and leaving the profession because of the fact that they are not paid according to the hours worked and the career is not sustainable. In order for it to be sustainable, someone had to support their professional growth which is where Ayd Cares saw the opportunity.
CHALLENGE
Our approach to the challenge.
Building a responsive website that can clearly define the difference between a caregiver and a PSW, educate and inform them about the needs, empower them and encourage them to use the platform.
For this project, we used the human-centered design approach, which is a creative way to problem-solving that starts with people and ends with innovative solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs.
OBSERVATION
Understanding the users.
01
In order to understand the PSW and caregiver perspectives, the survey was designed separately for both. Canada does have a huge community of PSW, and it was fairly easy for us to obtain the data using the survey which was deployed on PSW Facebook groups, Reddit and emailing client’s contacts.
However, it was really challenging for us to find primary data related to caregivers. For that, we used a research paper written by The Change Foundation about 3.3 million family caregivers in Ontario.
CAREGIVER
PERSONAL SUPPORT WORKER
50
6,850
Online Survey Respondents
Statistics Canada Research, Ontario
To understand the data we got from the survey and the research paper, we used the affinity mapping technique.
INSIGHTS
PERSONAL SUPPORT WORKERS
The survey was designed to understand the demographics of PSW, how they work, the challenges they face in this career and how would they want to improve the challenges.
96%
Female
Respondents
66%
35-54 years
of age
96%
Face job
challenges
86%
Work over 20
hours a week
Most of the challenges that they mentioned were client absenteeism, cancellations,
low wages, and credibility.
CAREGIVERS
53%
Female
Respondents
45-54 years
of age
23%
65%
Married/
Common-Law
76%
Caregiving with
paid employment
The challenges faced by the caregivers mostly included a negative impact on education,
work-life balance and absenteeism or lateness by the PSWs.
02
Brainstorming and planning solutions.
IDEATION
Going further through the research, we identified four personas, one for a PSW and three for caregiver, having different goals and frustrations. The aim is to create an educational website which will provide the best possible experience for each persona.
GOALS
GOALS
GOALS
GOALS
• Steady job & better wage
• Pro-active & flexible schedule
• Better incentives
• Consistent hours
• Mother's health
• Job security
• Work life balance
• Fulfill family responsibilities
• Work-life balance
• Spend time with family
• Career progression
• Finish university degree
• Get a promotion at work
• Work-life balance
FRUSTRATIONS
• Travel time spent to clients
• Inconsistent schedules
• Client absenteeism
• Unclear communication
"As a PSW, I want to have the ability to personalize my own schedule, so that I can have
a healthy work life balance."
FRUSTRATIONS
• Worried about mother's health
• Financial hardships
• Absenteeism from work
• Stressful schedule
"As a caregiver, I want to be able
to find the help my mother’s needs, so that I can focus on other family responsibilities."
FRUSTRATIONS
• Amount of care required
• PSW availability
• Cost of home care
• Financial stress
"As a caregiver for my grandfather, I want to find a PSW to help my father so that I can focus more on my job responsibilities."
FRUSTRATIONS
• Home care expenses
• Travel stress for daughter’s therapy
• Not enough time to relax
"As a single mother, I want to find
a PSW to help my daughter, so
that I can gain work-life balance again."
MARKET RESEARCH
We did a comprehensive market research understand where Ayd Cares fits in the market. We assessed what others have done about the problem, identify any weaknesses or strong points, and see how our design can improve on top of what’s already been done. The competitive analysis helped us understand how we can design Ayd Cares better and give users a great user experience.
SKETCHING
Low-fidelity Wireframing.
Once we gained a clearer picture of our users and the market competition, we began generating design solutions in the form of sketches on paper.
By creating low-fidelity wireframes, we were able to go through a lot of design ideas and iterations and quickly find the right ones.
PROTOTYPING
Digitizing the solutions.
03
When the low-fi wireframes were finalized, it was time to turn those sketches into digital prototypes. We used Adobe XD to create the responsive mid-fidelity prototypes for user testing.
What sets Ayd Cares apart?
CLEAR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PSW & CAREGIVER
The home page is designed in a way that first-time users got to understand the difference.
CLEAR & SIMPLE INFORMATION
HEIRARCHY
The information is simple, easy to understand and follow, engaging and not text-heavy.
CLEAR CALL TO
ACTONS
Users understand the vision of Ayd Cares and encourage them to use the phone apps that they offer.
SENSE OF
COMMUNITY
‘Meet our PSW’ section showcases some of the PSWs in the network and how they can help out the caregivers.
RESPONSIVE
DESIGN
The users are able to use view Ayd Cares site on their mobile phones as well.
04
USER TESTING
Validating the solution.
To ensure and validate that our solution works well, we conducted ten user tests on both mobile and web versions.
The team section was confusing for most of the users. It was not simple enough.
The design of the team section was simplified for the users.
People were looking for FAQ on the menu and were unable to locate.
FAQ was added in the menu navigation at the bottom.
“Some information is not needed and is too redundant. I wouldn’t want to read all of it.”
WHAT USERS SAID
Most of the users were not interested in reading all this information. It's too redundant.
The text was reduced. 'About Us' was replaced with 'Our Story'.
IMPLEMENTATION
The final solution.
05
The logo and the branding guidelines were already provided to us by the client. We spent some time looking for inspirations for illustrations and secondary colors, and came up with mood boards and a style guide which was loved by the client.
HIGH-FIDELITY
We revisited our initial designs and solved some of the issues we had found during the user testing stage. Based on the feedback and the style guide, we designed the high-fidelity wireframes.
WEB PROTOTYPE
MOBILE PROTOTYPE
FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS
During our presentation, we proposed some future considerations which he could add later on in the website. We suggested that Ayd Cares could have a profiles page where the PSWs and caregiver could see others’ profiles and filter them by skills and credentials. Moreover, the website could also add calendar functionality in the future for the PSWs to view their schedules from the website as well. Also, we proposed that they hire a copywriter who could write engaging yet simple copy which would get the mission of Ayd Cares across to the users.