Social Website to help elderly people
Help Me
Responsive website to connect users with volunteers.
Logo Design | UX Design | Webdesign
Helpme is a social service that connects elderly people who live alone in their homes, with volunteers willing to help them with small tasks, such as walking pets, shopping for groceries and pharmacy, going to the post office, etc.
HelpMe is a non-profit organization that provides a platform to connect volunteers with seniors who need small services at home.
Jun/21 to Aug/21
Cascais has a large community of retired elderly people living in their homes with little family support. This community needs timely help for small tasks, such as changing a lamp, walking the pets, going to the pharmacy or the post office.
Design a website that connects the elderly population with volunteers who are ready to do the necessary work, free of charge for the elderly and in a safe and efficient way.
Logo design and UX designer leading the app and responsive website design from conception to delivery
Conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, iterating on designs, determining information architecture, and responsive design.
Data on the elderly community were used to elaborate the questionnaire.
The non-moderated interviews were carried out among the elderly community, aged over 65, who live alone. On the other hand, interviews were carried out with possible volunteers, not moderated, and among the active community between 18 and 50 years old.
The feedback obtained clearly shows the usefulness and opportunity of this tool, which will allow contact between elderly people with needs and volunteers ready to help.
Not being a problem, users want to know the status of the process and know when they can count on help.
Users expressed concerns about trusting the process and the volunteers.
Elderly users need special attention to be carefully evaluated.
Special attention to button texts and flow to be as simplified as possible.
Armanda is a 78 years old retired civil servant who needs help at home with little tasks because she lives alone and there’s no one who can help her.
Manuel is an 82 years old teacher who needs to connect with volunteers to help him at home because he is losing the capacity of dealing with problems by himself.
An exhaustive search was carried out and no direct competitors were found, showing that the service to be provided is clearly timely and innovative.
Likewise, there are no indirect competitors, as there is only one company that provides domestic services but does not provide assistance in most of the necessary areas, such as shopping at a grocery or pharmacy, walking pets, or going to the post office. They only provide paid services related to house maintenance.
There being no competition to serve as a guide, the idealization had to start from scratch and be based mainly on user research. The main objective being to have two communities, seniors and volunteers interacting, the focus was to provide information in this regard and provide contact and registration tools.
After brainstorming and sketching some paper wireframes, I created the initial designs for the Help Me application. These projects focused on providing personalized guidance to users to help them interact. Elderly people communicate their needs and volunteers perform the requested services.
To prepare for the usability test, I created the low-fidelity prototype, which will allow interaction between seniors and volunteers.
40-60 minutes
12 participants total,
8 elderly users and 4 volunteers
Cascais-Portugal, remote
Unmoderated usability study
People want confidentiality and need to trust the app and service.
People need to know well what can be done to help them.
Users want an easy way to contact volunteers and keep tracking the process.
Additional options to pick date and time were added after the usability study.
Design was reviewed in order to clear indicated
how to function with app.
The second usability study revealed frustrations for not being able to change the pickup time. So
was inserted a way to choose a convenient pickup time for the user.
The high-fidelity prototype followed the same user flow as the low-fidelity prototype, including design changes made after the usability study.
View the Help Me high-fidelity prototype
Clear labels for interactive elements that can be read by screen readers.
Initial focus of the home screen on personalized recommendations help define the primary task or action for the user.
The use of images to facilitate understanding.
With the app designs completed, I started work on designing the responsive website. I used the HelpMe sitemap to guide the organizational structure of each screen’s design to ensure a cohesive and consistent experience across devices.
The designs for screen size variation included mobile, tablet, and desktop. I optimized the designs to fit the specific user needs of each device and screen size.
View the iPhone Help Me high-fidelity prototype
View the iPad Help Me high-fidelity prototype
View the PC Help Me high-fidelity prototype
Elderly users are looking forward to the launch of the App and can start to see their little issues resolved and be able to contact someone who can help them. There are some issues in the registration and identification of volunteers that are being resolved.
There is a huge community of destitute elderly people who, with a little help, can prolong their independence and continue to live in their homes. Therefore, although the problem to be solved is large and complex, the App will have to evolve more and more, facilitating contact between the elderly and volunteers as much as possible.
Conduct another round of usability studies to validate the corrections made based on users’ pain points and check if their experience has been effectively addressed.
Conduct more user research to determine any new areas of need.
Thank you for your time reviewing my work on the Help Me website! If you need help or if you want to contact me, please send me a message.