Providing help, support & companionship to tackle loneliness
I joined the companiions team as the sole UX/UI designer in August 2021, following a successful seed funding round. My role focused on implementing a user-centric design process to evaluate, iterate and ultimately improve the mobile app and backend admin system - delivering multiple feature updates to support the business as it scaled.
The direct-to-consumer service was tailored towards members of local communities who were struggling with isolation & loneliness - an issue exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. At this stage, we were completing only a few visits each month, with the vast majority of them organised through friend & family connections.
How did it work?
Users consisted of Organisers (in need of support) and Companions (providing support), with each using the same app. Organisers could book companions for affordable, in-person, on-demand visits involving help around the house, general care or even just companionship - with the companion getting paid for their time.
The organisers visit could be for themselves or a loved one, while companions were local community members who wanted to give their time whilst supplementing their income. Due to the expensive nature of traditional care agencies, companiions offered an affordable and accessible way to provide support to those who needed it most.
The operation of the service relied on two platforms; the mobile app and backend admin portal, each with different functions:
App - Organisers
Create a profile for the person receiving the visit, then create visits & search for local & available companions to invite. Track visit progress on the day then review & approve times to complete it & send payment to the companion.
App - Companions
Sign up & complete a vetting process consisting of ID, face scan & proof of address verification. Create a profile to explain what kind of support they can offer before setting availability, hourly rate & bank details to receive payment.
Backend Portal - Admins
View all users account details, onboarding status, recipient profile information & any reviews. Search users by name, email & postcode, filter by account type & status. Track all visits to provide ongoing support before, during & after.
Initial app review
While familiarising myself with the app I focused on general usability, looking to identify any quick wins that could improve or simplify the organiser booking or companion onboarding funnels - rather than making large functional changes early on.
This highlighted a lack of information on key processes - as a user it wasn't clear to you what to expect or what to do next at various points in the journey. I tried to address this with some minor updates:
This usability review highlighted the need for more detailed research & testing to help us understand:
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How new & existing users interact with the app
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The pain-points or difficulties they face
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How the overall companiions experience could be improved
In-depth user research
I began by creating a detailed research plan; outlining overall goals, participant recruitment, methodology & result analysis - read the full plan here
The main focus of this project was to:
Learn...
what barriers or hurdles may be preventing users from completing our major goals of registration, profile completion, companion viewing and companion booking.
By...
completing in-depth usability testing & interviews on key user journeys, gathering quant (task performance) & qual (short form interviews) data to identify problem areas.
With...
30 participants, representative of our users, conducting moderated & unmoderated testing involving completing a set task in the app - recorded on usertesting.com
The Results
800+
data points from observations, user testing & comments/feedback)
111
common themes formed by grouping original set of data points together
27
general insights re-grouped from the shared common themes
14
actionable insights formed after refining down the original set of 24
Research Insights...
Intro screens help users gain understanding but are too easy to not engage with
Allow users to explore the app and see the value it provides as soon as possible
The app doesn't do enough to assist users when completing their profile or account
Profile photos and reviews are key to the quality of the companion profile
The sign-up process is not intuitive enough
Some of the onboarding steps are not essential
Small interaction updates will improve usability
Make it easier to browse & find suitable people
Push repeat visits at the right time & make it easy
Availability doesn't offer enough control
Highlight when a key step has been completed and sign-post the next step clearly
We need to do more to reassure users and build trust in companiions
Users don't have adequate support if they need help or have an issue
Users need more guidance on completing key processes before they start them
We then placed these insights on an impact vs effort matrix to objectively assess the implications of tackling each one - helping us to begin prioritising which areas we should address first:
This process resulted in five chosen discovery areas:
Some of the onboarding steps are not essential
Profile photos and reviews are key to the quality of the companion profile
Allow users to explore the app and see the value it provides as soon as possible
Make it easier for organisers to browse and find suitable companions
Promote repeat visits at the right time and make it easy
How Might We's
'How might we' statements are "small but mighty questions that allow us to reframe our insights into opportunity areas and innovate on problems found during user research" (Dscout). We ideated around our chosen insights and generated a HMW for each one:
HMW
make simple, functional improvements to remove pain-points & allow users to complete key processes with minimal effort?
HMW
reduce opportunities for users to opt out of, or not start, processes that we know will contribute to visit numbers?
HMW
give organisers the necessary tools to browse, find & book companions in as few steps as possible - based on their individual needs?
HMW
allay any fears of each user once a visit is confirmed, to increase booked visit completion rates & maximise the likelihood of a great first visit?
HMW
make support and guidance available to the user when they need it, and create suitable feedback loops to capture issues our users are facing?
HMW
give companions the feeling they are making an incredible difference in the world whilst also supporting them to get to a first completed visit?
HMW
help an organiser find a great companion within the first 2 minutes on the app?
HMW
better understand organiser's trust concerns & answer them in a timely, constructive and personalised way?
HMW
give internal admins the tools they need to support users with any booking request?
Customer support via the admin portal
While a design sprint took place to ideate around some of the insights & HMWs relating to the in-app experience, we also looked at ways of positively addressing one of the longer term challenges we faced:
“ We need to do more to reassure users and build trust in companiions ”
We recognised that building trust in our brand would take time, but felt that we could begin to actively build trust via our customer success team; providing immediate value to users by matchmaking & booking visits on their behalf until the necessary improvements had been made to the app.
We identified, designed and implemented four new areas of functionality to our backend admin system in order to do this:
Supply Quality - to give us full control over which companion profiles appear for organisers when booking, therefore controlling the overall quality of our supply, we introduced a 'published' toggle - ensuring only profiles that had been vetted internally were visible in the app.
Matching & Reporting - to support the customer success team in finding the right companion for each visit; price, distance and availability was added to each profile, along with a history of their visits - making reporting on individual visit data more accessible.
Visit Management - to facilitate complete support from the CS team throughout the booking & visit process, we introduced a manual booking flow; enabling us to create a visit, invite a companion, edit check in & out times and approve & pay all in the admin portal on the users behalf. This, in particular, would allow us to keep visit numbers progressing while developing the necessary in-app changes to get users booking visits by themselves.
Developing HMW's into viable solutions
We looked to address a number of the HMW statements through user journey simplifications, bug & reliability fixes and removing unnecessary steps & major friction points. Two of the key insights that needed a more in-depth, creative solution focused on the browsing & booking process, which was not intuitive and lacked suitable functionality - reflected in the extremely low number of customers using it autonomously.
Allow users to explore the app & see the value it provides as soon as possible
Make it easier for organisers to browse and find suitable companions
HMW
give organisers the necessary tools to browse, find & book companions in as few steps as possible - based on their individual needs?
The original browsing & booking process had a number of issues, highlighted during the research project, that needed addressing. After ideating around our HMW statements and exploring how to correct these shortcomings, we released four key functional improvements to the browsing & booking process - to support our organisers and kick start visit numbers:
In the weeks after implementing these changes, alongside the updates to the admin portal to give the customer success team more control, we began to see a consistent uptake in our visit numbers:
25
visits booked weekly
5/5
average visit rating
75%
of visits booked by CS team
Ongoing customer feedback
As visit numbers continued to sit at just over 100 per month, we started to gather feedback from our active organisers on how their experience could be improved even further. This highlighted three key pain-points that were impacting their ability to book:
The rebooking process is too long winded
After completing a visit, organisers almost always re-booked the same companion. However, to do this they had to repeat the entire browsing & booking process to find & invite them, which was too labour intensive.
You can't communicate before having to book
Man organisers wanted to be able to ask companions questions while browsing but couldn't until they'd sent an invite. This was a big commitment to make before they’d established if the companion was suitable for their visit.
Companion profiles aren't informative enough
once viewing a companions profile organisers were often completely reliant on the bio to tell them whether that person is suitable, there was a lack of detailed & useful information to help them make decisions.
In response to the first two pain-points, two quick-win updates were implemented at the end of a short design & development sprint:
Rebooking Flow - The post visit flow was updated to include an instant re-book option after leaving a review. Organisers then only need to set a date, time & visit description to send the invite; drastically reducing time required to rebook as they no longer had to browse & find them first.
Message before booking - We allowed messaging of companions from the profile without having to send a visit invite first, so organisers could ask any questions before committing to a visit.
Results
Increase in regular organisers rebooking visits by themselves, after completing their first visit.
Decrease in reliance on the CS team to book repeat visits on behalf of returning organisers.
Increase in the total number of reviews left by organisers after completing their visit.
“ Companion profiles aren't informative enough ”
Feedback from our users and the limited quantitative data we had available to us showed that, in general, organisers needed help finding a companion but once they’d completed a visit they typically continued to rebook the same person.
The companion profiles needed to be more informative to help the decision making process while browsing - they didn't have enough detail for the organiser to decide if the companion was a good fit for their specific needs. We decided to redesign the profile process entirely, taking parts of our existing vetting process & automating it in-app; to help organisers find the right companion themselves & reduce over-reliance on the CS team.
Original companion profile flow
Initial Assumptions...
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The process should be simple & intuitive to use and quick to complete, reducing opportunities for drop off.
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We need to gather enough information to help organisers make decisions, but not so much to overwhelm companions.
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Organisers value both what the companion can offer, as well as why they joined the platform.
In order to help categorise our companions more clearly, and to help with the matching process, we looked into the primary areas of support the service was currently being used for. We then regrouped these into four, clear, simplified offerings:
Childcare
General childcare activities including babysitting & school runs
Childcare
Specialised support for childcare
General Care
Supporting someone in need ie. elderly, disability, illness etc
Eldercare
Specialised support for elderly loved ones
Supporting a loved one
Everyday assistance for someone when you can’t be there in person
Everyday Assistance
General support for everyday life
Companionship
Being there for someone who may be struggling with mental health
Mental Wellbeing
A supportive friend for anyone who needs it
This provided the foundation for our companion profiles and the key types of support they could provide on the platform.
Focusing on information about the companion most requested by organisers when the CS team were manually match-making, we then began to build out additional fields within each section - focusing on what would be most effective in helping organisers find the right people for their visit:
Skills & Experience
Which support areas do they have experience in, and do they have any specific skills or experience in them?
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Previous experience
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Skills specific to each support area
The Individual
Who are they, what are their interests & why did they join companions? Are the two parties likely to get on in person?
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Activities they're open to doing
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Bio including hobbies & interests
Key Requirements
Do they have any additional skills, qualifications or certificates that might be required for the visit in question?
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Certifications ie. DBS, first aid etc
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Travel requirements ie. Car owner
This informed the first draft of a new companion profile flow...
Getting to know them
Step 1 focused on understanding how the companion can be of assistance, why they joined and what sort of activities they'd be willing to assist with. DBS and driving status were also included here.
Previous Experience
Step 2 was centered around previous experience, specific skills in each support type & first aid status - this section tried to answer the question "does this person have the ability to provide my specific needs?"
Extra Information
Steps 3 & 4 gathered extra information to bulk up the profile and put a face to a name - with the companion able to add hobbies & interest, covid compliance information and then finally, a profile photo.
Testing & Feedback...
We tested this with some of our regular companions to get some early feedback, asking them to explore the new journey with a figma prototype to understand how easy it was to complete and how likely they would be to complete the full process.
The results showed we were on the right track but highlighted some minor changes that could improve things even further:
The longer process doesn’t reduce motivation to complete the profile
They weren’t always able to add as much information as they’d like to
It would definitely take less than the hour I'd be willing to commit to completing it
Yes it didn't take very long at all, it felt fine to complete time-wise
There is more experience I would have added to the bio but I ran out of words
I still don't feel like I have the space to, with past experience, elaborate with examples
They’re comfortable with the information required from them
They need more clarification and guidance on profile quality
It all seems ok, the information is good, I'd be happy to add it all
Yeah I'm happy, really happy to add all that information, it doesn't bother me at all
It would be nice to know, beforehand, what I was going to be asked, just to prepare
I can't compare it to anyone else...so how do I really know if it's a good profile?
We took this feedback and developed the process further, adding a new ‘How I got my experience’ section, separate to the bio, to allow companions to give some background information about their experiences.
We also adjusted the order of information to focus on past experience & skills first, removing unwanted sections like hobbies & interests which weren’t important to organisers when browsing. The final concept combines these changes into a single, improved, companion onboarding flow:
To allow the customer success team to support companions in completing their profile, and resolve any challenges or quality issues, we also implemented a new companion profile view in the backend admin portal.
This included an edit function to allow us to make changes to a companions profile, or even complete it on their behalf, during an onboarding call if required.
A shift to B2B
While the new companion profile work was ongoing, the company took the decision to shift its focus from direct-to-consumer to B2B - electing to offer the service directly to organisations as an employee benefit.
The details of this shift and the subsequent product rebuild and strategic decisions that took place are detailed in a separate project.
