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Role:

Content design, Secondary research, Brand Strategy, Video editing, Prototyping, Journey mapping

Duration:

2022 Mar - Apr,  5 weeks

Team:

Amy Guo, Hana Guo, James Yoo, Jo Zhou, Meng Zhao, Mutte Chen, Toby He

Tool:

Figma, Adobe Premiere Pro, Procreate, Adobe Photoshop

Design overview :

In an experience design class, I chose to explore the possibilities of enhancing the experience of Be My Eyes, a free app that provides assistance to people with visual impairment. Our research found that the number of visually impaired people was much lower than the number of volunteers. So our team and I wish the app could contribute the most value to the low-vision community and help more low-vision users by improving the quality of help received by the visually impaired.
We ended up shifting as much of the operation affordance cost of Be My Eyes from the visually impaired to the volunteers. Designing and promoting a more visually impaired-focused experience, and making the information more efficiently accessible with the support of more experienced volunteers and corporate groups.

Research :

What is Be My Eyes?

Be My Eyes is a free-to-use mobile application that aims to make the world more accessible for blind and low-vision* users. Be My Eyes (BME) connects blind and low vision users with sighted volunteers or the company for visual assistance through a live video chat.

Through research, I found that Be My Eyes is free to use. Still, BME works with companies as their partners to provide them with funding and professional information services for visually impaired users. At the same time, BME can bring millions of potential visually impaired users to become customers and even employees of these partner companies. The team and I also analyze the brand value pillars for BME. We concluded that BME places a high value on and wants to enable users to experience inclusivity, accessibility and the creation of supportive connections between users.

*low-vision: visually impaired and legally blind who cannot correct their vision with a single optical device (e.g. glasses or contacts)

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The way BME is funded and the large number of potentially visually impaired people who could become users show retaining current users and attracting more users can help BME gain business value.

How does BME work originally?

Through hands-on use, one of my teammates worked with me to create the user flow. Users can register as visually impaired users or volunteers to provide help. Based on the language and location selections, the system will connect users and volunteers who share the same linguistic customs. The contacting page for visually impaired users is displayed with a huge function button, “Call a volunteer,” instantly reaching out for help. Be My Eyes also offers “Specialized Help” service that directly connects the visually impaired community to a company’s specialized customer service center. 

What do users say?

We collected feedback and opinions from users on different platforms and we summarized these contents in a preliminary way.

Framing :

What mental model might the customers have?

By analyzing the user feedback we collected, we have summarized the experience and concerns of volunteers and visually impaired users. We also examined the reasons for the gap between users’ expectations and current service and whether these were in design or technical aspects. This will help us as designers come up with frame questions and solutions that are in the company's interest and that are achievable and close to the user.

We have summarized the following main points about what users want to experience:
   1. Visually Impaired Users think the app will be helpful to address daily common problems.
   2. Visually Impaired Users expect the volunteer to be able to help with their knowledge.
   3. Visually Impaired Users might have anxiety when talking with a volunteer stranger.
   4. Volunteers Users expect to have a lot of opportunities to help low-vision people.

What mental model do we want the visually impaired users to have?

   1. They will feel relaxed when interacting with volunteers.
   2. They receive substantial help to solve their problems through simple interactions.
   3. They can realize all volunteers are enthusiastic to help so they don’t worry about causing trouble for volunteers.

Insight & Framed question

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Solution :

How do we help them form the right mental model?

With the summary above, we found that users encounter obstacles in getting help from professional or more experienced volunteers. This is why some visually impaired people are willing to pay for access to companies that provide professional services. However, we found that the low-vision user interface also has a specialized help function. In this feature, we discovered that BME actually offers consulting services from many companies and professionals in the field, but few users mention this feature. Is this UX feature less prioritized?

So I took a deeper look into the experience of low-vision people using cell phones and the design of the UI. I found that low-vision people need to use a feature called VoiceOver when using a touch screen phone. By using this feature, I simulated how low-vision people need to find the information they need in the specialized help feature. In the video below, we can see that information searching becomes extremely complicated and costly for low-vision users. Users need to listen to the system to read out all the categories, or users can only find the company by searching the exact company name.

In the end, we believe that there are several major problems for users in getting specialized help:

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First Prototype & user test

Our first solution focused on changing the process for low-vison users by allowing them to choose volunteers with different areas of expertise. We blend special services with volunteer features, allowing users to select a broad needs category. Then, depending on the type of need, the system will contact volunteers and companies with relevant skills. We also added a step to the volunteer registration process to select their specialties.

We then looked for several visually impaired people. By having them try to use it as well as interviewing them, we found some problems with this prototype. Changing the interface of low-vision users is increasing affordance costs for them. In addition, they already have difficulties in seeing and controlling the interface due to their health condition, so the affordance cost would be extremely high for them.

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Second proposal, prototype & user test

As the process designer responsible for the entire experience, I decided to revisit the information we had collected. Through the data about the number of users provided by BME and the comments left by users. I found that there was an insight into the volunteer user perspective that we had been ignoring. Since the number of volunteers far exceeded the number of visually impaired users by a factor of 14, volunteers seldom receive a help video, and some volunteers never had the opportunity to receive a help video.

Therefore, we decided to seek alternative solutions from the volunteer’s perspective because there's a large number of idle volunteers. We can give them more chances to help the users as they are also enthusiastic about helping, so it is worth more developing from their perspective.

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Through discussion, we came up with a new proposal. We will keep the design so that volunteers can choose their specialized skills when they signing up. Then, we decided to add a standardized tutorial for Be My Eyes volunteers on how to properly operate the app and communicate with visually impaired people. At the end of the tutorial, there will be a quiz to ensure that all volunteers are reliable and have the necessary knowledge. In addition, we have added a call transfer feature during video calls, which allows volunteers to transfer calls to other experts once they feel they cannot handle the inquiry appropriately. This avoids the additional affordance costs of low-vision users seeking help again for unresolved issues or searching through the categories.

We created a low-fidelity prototype for user testing.

We got five volunteers to participate in user testing. Their feedback, and our observations of the obstacles they encountered during the use of this prototype, helped us clarify what we needed to improve next.

Finalizing

We chose art direction for the final design. We selected colors that are friendly to color-blind users. At the same time, the various vision conditions can cause reduced visual clarity resulting in blurry vision. Because of the consistent line thickness and its wide width in Akzidenz Grotesk typeface, the clarity and legibility remain with reduced visual clarity.

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Registration
flow :

Based on the feedback we received, our team discussed and optimized our design. First, we added some guidance for our users who generally lack experience communicating with low-vision people. We kept the language and instructions in easy-to-understand terms.

The second is that some volunteers are resistant to quiz, because they think it takes more time or they want to get rewards. However, we think that a quiz is a way for volunteers to show their willingness to help, and it should not be driven by rewards. But we hope that volunteers can get the correct information more easily and directly after making a mistake in a quiz. To do this, we showed the correct approach under the wrong question and added a button to direct volunteers to the tutorial where the information was located.

Tutorial & Quiz flow :

Finally, users felt that the categories they needed to select for transferring calls were somewhat broad. So we added more categories by referring to the most frequently asked questions provided by BME, BME's collaborators, and the difficulties that low-vision people encounter. However, we thought that overly detailed categories would make it difficult for users to find them, and that it would be impossible to cover all possibilities. In the end, we decided to add a leave note function after the category selection, so that volunteers can describe the problems. This way the person who receives the transferred call can also determine whether he or she is able to help based on the detailed description.

Transfer call flow :

Reflection :

Through this project, for the first time, I did not only need to consider the user and the product itself but also analyze its business value. This project taught me how to interpret the value proposition and convey the brand experience to the user through experience design. From a business perspective, we emphasize the brand value pillars of being supportive and accessible by creating a better interaction flow between the low-vision users and the volunteer users. From low-vision users’ perspective, they can receive more professional specialized help from volunteers while maintaining the simple operation methods. At last, from volunteer users’ perspective, they can select what specific categories they want to help, and practice their skills of providing help for low-vision users through tutorials and quizzes.

In conclusion, I am satisfied with the solution we proposed. Although it is a redesign of an existing application, we have found a new design direction through research and analysis. If we have more time afterwards, I think our visual expression of the interface can be improved to maintain a balance between aesthetics and simplicity. Also, our pitch is now more like an explanatory video. Therefore, we can further enhance the content to make the pitch more appealing.

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