Age UK
Innovation concepts for an advice line at capacity: a 24 hour conversational assistant, analytics driven volunteer matching, and virtual reality aimed at social isolation.
Duration
2017
Team
8
Scale
Enterprise
Scope
United Kingdom
Overview
Age UK's Advice Line ran from eight in the morning until seven at night, 365 days a year, and took more than 250,000 calls a year. The need behind those calls does not stop at seven o'clock.
I took that single operational fact as the starting point, and mapped the organisation through three separate lenses rather than one: the older person receiving the service, the volunteer giving their time, and the donor. The persona work put the end user need as companionship and help with daily chores, which is a very different brief from information provision.
The innovation concepts
**A 24 hour conversational assistant in front of the advice line.*
Natural language handling of general enquiries, and structured intake on the complex ones so an advisor starts the call already knowing the situation. The aim was never to replace advisors. It was to stop the clock deciding who gets help.
**Analytics driven volunteer matching for Call in Time.*
Matching the telephone befriending service on previous volunteering, interests, availability and location rather than on whoever is next on the list. A befriending relationship either fits or it quietly lapses.
**A peer to peer portal for shared experience.*
Older people advising each other and sharing what worked, turning a service that broadcasts information into one that circulates it.
**Virtual reality aimed squarely at isolation.*
Virtual rooms where people meet and talk and where volunteers can join them, family presence for relatives who cannot visit in person, reminiscence and diversional therapy, and travel from an armchair. Proposed for loneliness, which is the unglamorous use, rather than as a showcase.
Why it mattered
The advice line concept came out of decomposing a real constraint, opening hours against annual call volume against request type, rather than from proposing the technology of the year. That is the part of this I would still argue for.
Project Artifacts
Project Details
Industry
Non-Profit
Duration
2017
Team Size
8
Direct Reports
3
Scale
Enterprise
Scope
United Kingdom
Budget
Undisclosed
Platforms
Web, Mobile and Native: iOS and Android, VR, Conversational
Regulatory
Heavy
Engagement
Digital innovation concepts, user research and experience design