Social Support App
A sphere of social relations and support draws the attention of celebrities, governments, and benefactors all over the globe. Currently, social support is developing rapidly in Western countries, where officials and public figures contribute to the improvement of a living standard.
Our client requested us to design a people-oriented app that would help seniors and people with disabilities to hire support workers and manage these relations via a smartphone. The idea was to create a competitive labor market for independent support workers and organizations and to provide an easy way to get qualified help for those who need it.
Challenges faced
Our main goal was to combine simplicity, usability, and multifunctionality for a number of users, including seniors and people with disabilities, their guardians, and support workers. It was quite a responsible task to bring this complex idea to life. We had to bear in mind the tiniest nuances of the sphere, as well as the needs of the target audience. We were challenged to design a CRM-like application allowing the users to manage the working hours, list of contacts, documentation, etc.
Our approach
To achieve the goal, we followed the Design Thinking methodology. It perfectly suits for creating different user-oriented products and services. When designing a product, we considered the user request, technical implementation, and costs. This approach helped us to quickly identify user problems and to design and visualize an effective solution.
To reach the final variant, we went through the following 6 stages: empathy, defining, brainstorming, prototyping, testing, and launching. We considered different solutions and followed the established procedure of the methodology, bearing in mind the industry and social peculiarities of the target audience.
Features implemented
We designed a separate interface for each user category. The mobile app lets support workers create events for clients, charge for work, review and create reports for the tax service, track additional costs, add contacts, and invite other prospective users to join the service. Clients and their guardians, in turn, can track their expenses, organize the visits of support workers, and check the profile of current and potential workers. We have also designed an admin panel for managing the mobile application, which possesses all the features for smart product management.
Fortunately, the IT industry offers a range of technologies to realize this project. Which one to choose is still a point for discussion. Our programmers are proficient both in native mobile development and cross-platform development. We will likely choose either React Native or Flutter since they are more cost-efficient and significantly promote time-to-market, while the quality and functionality of the app will not concede to a native one. As for the back-end stack, we find the Symfony framework to be the best option, as it suits perfectly for developing such a complex and multi-functional app.
Value Delivered
This mobile app offers tangible benefits to the social support sphere. Support workers have a very dynamic schedule and are not able to check their desktop applications. The very purpose of this app is to provide users with essential mobility, increasing the convenience and maximizing the effectiveness of specific activities.
The application allows for the organization of work schedule, contact list storing, accounting, and tax tracking. We combined the features characteristic of CRM systems, time management apps and documentation databases, and wrapped them in an appealing design. The app is designed to make communication in the social care space faster, more accessible, and transparent.
Experience Gained
This was an extremely interesting project for the OTAKOYI team as we got valuable experience in the health & social care domain. We resorted to prototype-driven development, i.e. our UX designer created a clickable prototype of an entire app to make the development process easier and the functionality clear to the client. Regular stand-ups with the client let the team deeply understand the business niche and user needs and quickly implement acquired knowledge to the project.
Our company tried to go the extra mile at each stage of the project, digging deeper into the social care realm and applying the best UI/UX practices. At OTAKOYI, we are firmly convinced that technologies can change the world for the better. We hope that this app will contribute to public aid by making communication and business easier and faster both for clients and workers.