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Description
To start the project off, I took part in a group ideation workshop, where we came up with ideas around problems in certain aspects of life. Our group explored the ideas of health, transport, politics, and education. After mind mapping, we reviewed our work to try and find connections that could spawn new ideas. Some of the connections we found included; Uber and A+E; Voter ID and authenticator apps; and GP wait times and AI. The last idea; GP wait times and AI; caught my imagination.
One of the problems identified was the amount of time you have to spend waiting to get through on the phone to GPs. I had a slight idea that this might be solvable in some way with AI. To find out more about this issue, I interviewed a friend who I knew had experienced this issue and created a user persona and empathy map from it which helped me realise what the main frustrations were. I also wrote user stories to build the themes from the empathy map into more practical scenarios.
Having completed my research, I was able to arrive at a concept for my project. My idea was to use an AI which would listen to the user’s calls when in a hold queue, and relay information such as queue position and time to the user's smartwatch to be visually displayed. In doing so, this would allow the user to go about their day without having to constantly listen to the phone. While this wouldn’t end waiting, this would end users having to sit on hold for long periods, which was one of the main frustrations I found from my user research.
Next, I began sketching what this idea would look like and how it would work. My initial plan was to have a Rolodex-type system where users would enter the number they wanted to call into the app so that they could start calls from their watch. However, I quickly realised this overcomplicated the idea and that it made more sense to integrate the app into the phone's built-in caller as users would already be comfortable using it.
I explored a range of options during the digital development process, eventually settling on a fairly simple but effective UI by consistently using a central action button or indicator with informative text curved around it. With the framework in place, I worked up a brand which would allow me to build up the visuals of the app.
Once I had completed my designs, I showed them to the same person I interviewed during my research. They agreed that this would be an effective solution to the problem I had identified.
The final step of this project was presenting it to my class for critique. The feedback was largely positive, with the only big change recommended being to show the time the user should expect the call, rather than how long it would be to get the call. I thought this was a great idea as it made the experience easier for the user, so I decided to implement it.
I was really pleased with the outcome of this project. It was the tightest turnaround I’ve had for a project, being only 2 weeks, however, I felt I got a lot done and that the project felt complete. I think this could be a genuinely good solution to a problem almost all of us have to face at some point.
