Improving the phone call experience for people with disability
Context
Relay Services are free, government services for Deaf, hard of hearing or speech-impaired to assist with making and receiving phone calls. Providing a range of channels, these calls are facilitated through a call centre where agents relay conversation in various ways - depending on the service user’s communication needs.
The NRS was undergoing a massive restructure that would see migration of its customer service provision, and urgently needed to replatform their existing app solutions. Concentrix Catalyst was brought on board as a key driver of this transformation.
Platforms - Native iOS, Android applications
Role - Lead UX Researcher, Lead Product Designer (UX/UI)
Key achievements
Increased 40% call traffic to mobile channel
Attracted substantial follow-up investment, including additional funding from the AFG for further product and service design initiatives
Winner of 6 x industry awards due to adherence to high-level accessibility standards and inclusive design
Subsequent development of white label product for international markets
Subsequent development of New Zealand Relay Service native applications and website
Problem space
The National Relay Service (NRS), a vital government service for Deaf, hard of hearing, or speech-impaired individuals, faced significant issues with its existing app solutions. These problems included a cumbersome, multi-step user experience for making calls and non-compliance with WCAG accessibility standards. These issues were reflected in a growing list of negative feedback from users within the community, and significantly little engagement with the mobile applications themselves.
As part of our design challenge to not only re-platform the apps, but solve for these issues, we faced the added challenges of having limited time and limited exposure designing research with people specific within the community and with these specific communication needs.
Approach
In response to these challenges, we embarked on a comprehensive replatforming effort as part of the NRS's broader restructuring initiative. Our approach prioritized user-centric design, inclusivity, and accessibility compliance. We conducted in-depth user research to understand the diverse communication needs of our users and collaborated closely with the Deaf and hard of hearing community to gather valuable insights. This informed our redesign strategy.
Methodology
We conducted a thorough landscape analysis and organized business discovery workshops, incorporating ideation activities to explore new features. Prioritization workshops helped define low-fidelity prototypes. Simultaneously, we streamlined design and development, necessitating the rapid development of a UI Kit integrated into Zeplin for iterative design. Despite limited accessibility support, I established a self-evaluation system for accessibility compliance, serving as a guide and progress-tracking tool throughout the project.
We adopted a collaborative approach to research with the Deaf and hard of hearing community. This approach involved:
Research co-design and recruitment through advocacy organisation Expression Australia
Inclusive research sessions which included Auslan interpretation and room set up to ensure optimal comfort of participants
Parallel qualitative interviews to uncover system/service based pain points, drilling down into product experience and use of Kano to determine feature preferences and define the product backlog
Outcomes
Increased 40% call traffic to mobile channel
Attracted substantial follow-up investment, including additional funding from the AFG for further product and service design initiatives
Winner of 6 x industry awards due to adherence to high-level accessibility standards and inclusive design (Good Design Awards, Driven x Design, iAwards)
Subsequent development of white label product for international markets
Subsequent development of NZ Relay Service applications
