Improving cross-organisational collaboration through Reach App

The app which connects outreach workers

Role
UX Design

Purpose

University Assignment

Platforms
Web

Areas

Strategy, Design

Background

Outreach workers provide support, referrals and education to individuals in need across Australia. They work for different organisations such as The Court Network, South Eastern Sydney Local Health District and others. They often undergo a high degree of training and work closely with others to improve outreach skills. With 62,200 Australian currently employed as Welfare Support Workers (Australian Government Job Outlook, 2020) and many of them conducting outreach, this is a significant financial burden for the organisations involved.

With myself having worked as an outreach worker, I was aware of the often fragmented and inefficient way that health organisations often worked with each other, I wanted to explore how this could be improved.

Approach

I conducted 8 video interviews with members of staff from my organisation as well as from the Court Outreach Network to substantiate evidence. This helped me understand what issues they faced. Gaining both perspectives, I believed, was vital to creating a design solution which could be realistically implemented and also address user needs.

Key Takeaways

Faciliate the flow of information
There are many benefits for outreach workers by facilitating the flow of information between different organisations. Although not always appropriate, facilitating information and training for outreach workers could enhance the rate at which outreach workers are successful in providing outreach and could improve factors such as communication styles, conflict resolution and knowledge sharing.
Create more opportunities for understanding
Reflective practices can be effective for outreach. Indeed, due to many outreach workers dealing with complex situations, allowing outreach workers to have more opportunities about how to approach situations, why some interactions were better than others, and what can be done in future could assist workers significantly. This could have the impact of allowing workers to reach more clients more effectively.
Providing outreach can be complex
Outreach method which benefits one group - such as using virtual information distribution - may not necessarily benefit another. For instance, many indigenous groups use technology to lesser degree, in which case, distributing virtual resources would be ineffective. Indeed, not every tool or resource will be appropriate for every outreach worker, so ensuring the right resources and trainings get to the right workers will be a key consideration.

These takeaways heavily informed the final app designs, and after a subsequent round of user-testing, I was able to deliver high-fidelity mockups of the app.

Faciliate the flow of information
There are many benefits for outreach workers by facilitating the flow of information between different organisations. Although not always appropriate, facilitating information and training for outreach workers could enhance the rate at which outreach workers are successful in providing outreach and could improve factors such as communication styles, conflict resolution and knowledge sharing.
Create more opportunities for understanding
Reflective practices can be effective for outreach. Indeed, due to many outreach workers dealing with complex situations, allowing outreach workers to have more opportunities about how to approach situations, why some interactions were better than others, and what can be done in future could assist workers significantly. This could have the impact of allowing workers to reach more clients more effectively.
Providing outreach can be complex
Outreach method which benefits one group - such as using virtual information distribution - may not necessarily benefit another. For instance, many indigenous groups use technology to lesser degree, in which case, distributing virtual resources would be ineffective. Indeed, not every tool or resource will be appropriate for every outreach worker, so ensuring the right resources and trainings get to the right workers will be a key consideration.

These takeaways heavily informed the final app designs, and after a subsequent round of user-testing, I was able to deliver high-fidelity mockups of the app.

Impact

This redesign resulted garnered positive feedback from the team, with the initial stakeholders and organisational leaders at NSW Health and The Court Outreach Network expressing positive feedback for its potential to transform their organisation. I really enjoyed creating this project and it helped emphasise the importance of research and going wide with the problem before creating focus in design.