WheelAccess

App design, ux research, Evaluation

Project Overview

Often times we come across places that are not exactly friendly for people with motor disabilities. WheelAccess is a one-stop solution to all the needs of our users, from providing information about accessible travel routes and entertainment options like restaurants and gardens, to wheelchair repair services and volunteer assistance. The idea for this app stemmed from a problem I noticed while volunteering at an NGO.

People with motor impairments had to plan in advance to ensure that they could travel and go to places comfortably and without any worry. The main problem existed in the fact there while there was a plethora of resources that provided information about this, there was no single platform that could cater to all their needs.

My Contributions

Understanding the problem, conducting qualitative interviews, creating empathy map, evaluating and implementing feedback, app UI design, logo design.

Project Context

July 2022
Personal project
Team: Vedant Gandhi, Palka Dhirawani
Tools Used: Figma, Miro

People with motor impairments at NGO loved field trips. But they rarely went out on their own.

Research Process

Qualitative Interviews

We prepared a set of open-ended questions to gain a better perspective of the needs of the user. Our interviewees consisted of people with motor disabilities across all ages.

What are the difficulties you face while traveling from one place to another?
What are your concerns when visiting restaurants, malls, etc?
What planning is involved before stepping out for chores?
How comfortable are you with using new apps on your phone?
Do you ask for assistance or someone to accompany you when going out of the house? If yes, what do you seek assistance for?

Insights Gained

Qualitative research gave us information ranging from the issues they currently face to the features or services they absolutely need. We drew the following insights from the data above to improve user experience:

Users had to switch between apps for different purposes and would spend a lot of time pre-planning.
They felt obligated to ask for help over and over again.
Accessibility-related information available online is difficult to segregate and is not up-to-date.

Empathy Maps

We created empathy maps based on the people we interviewed. The names Dhruv and Usha used in the maps represent the younger and the older demographic of the interviewees respectively.

* Click on the image to zoom in

How might we make the end-to-end process more accessible and independent?

THE SOLUTION

Designing New Features

1. Filtering reviews and accessibility rating

This feature ensured that users found it easy to segregate reviews and make decisions quicker regarding the accessibility of a place. Along with this, we also incorporated an accessibility rating property that gave venues an accurate rating based on ease of accessibility.

App design showing filtering review feature

app design showing getting assistance feature

2. Getting assistance easier through the app

We incorporated 2 features to ensure that our users could feel independent in carrying out tasks.
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a) Volunteer for Assistance: Volunteers who signed up to provide assistance would be able to connect with people with motor disabilities.
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b) Get Assistance: The leading concern that our target audience had was that they had to depend on family members to get from one place to another, therefore we provided the option of getting assistance from volunteers.

3. All-in-one app

One of the core USPs of our app was ensuring that our users could go out with assurance and have all the assistance and relevant information they need.
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The users could get information about wheelchair-friendly going out options like restaurants and travel options as well as information about wheelchair related services.

Feedback Evaluation

Large Fonts: A major percentage of our target audience consists of people who fall under the senior citizen category. These users require text that is easy to read and icons that are easy to understand. Hence we increased of the font sizes in the design.
Provide option to rent wheelchairs: Users wanted to have the flexibility of renting wheelchairs when they travel.
Provide a description of travel options: Users belonging to the older age group found it difficult to interpret icons and wanted a description that could help them understand the route or the travel option provided. Hence, we issued a description for every route. This also ensured that screen readers could read out the travel option and its details to users with visual impairments.