Hannah Belshaw

This challenge is to prototype and test ways of providing remote support for individuals struggling or failing to make Universal Credit claims online for reasons like a lack of digital or language skills, or mental health issues.

Prototyping – Prototype A

I was tasked with creating Protoype A, a visualisation or ‘overview’ of steps. It was created with the intention of being a friendly and accessible overview of the whole process so that potential applicants could see the steps involved. Having used Figma before and knowing how great it is for collaborating and commenting on work, I decided to use this to create the prototype. I wasn’t starting from scratch as one of the digital team members had already created this horizontal service map:

This challenge is to prototype and test ways of providing remote support for individuals struggling or failing to make Universal Credit claims online for reasons like a lack of digital or language skills, or mental health issues.

Further User Research – Definition
It was obvious from our initial user interviews some of the main hurdles users were coming up against. As a team we had to prioritise which of these we were going to investigate further. We wrote about how we did this here.

We now had assumptions to test:

1. Would users benefit from knowing excatly what was needed and the steps they would have to take before they started their application?
2. Would users benefit from being able to share their application remotely with an advisor?

My children (aged 13 and 9) have had the new kids Starling Kite card for the last month.

The Starling Kite card allows you to allocate money into your child’s own ’space’ within your account. They are then sent a debit card that they can use to withdraw cash from a cash machine or pay in a shop with contactless or chip and pin. Starling’s idea behind Kite is to make children more responsible with their money and help them build good spending habits. 

The children really enjoy using it. I think this comes mainly from a feeling grown up and not having to worry about bringing cash. In a pandemic world, where cash is less accepted, it is a perfect solution for them. Despite the good start, we have come across a big problem.

This book has been recommended on pretty much every design booklist that I have seen so I have bought myself a copy. Looking forward to seeing what I can learn…