Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash
During lockdown (and for several years around then) I was working in a strange company — an advertising agency that, from time to time, would attract a UX or Service Design project that it shouldn’t ever, at all, ever get invited to run.
Fortunately, when a project came along with enough risk attached, or the client was more mature than my colleagues, there would actually be buy-in for user-centred design processes and I would get to do standard iterative, evidence-based design.
And when the world ended in 2020, very briefly; such a project appeared.
In May 2020, whilst locked in my London micro-flat, waiting for an asthma/covid-inspired death with no real work to do, I was approached with a request that Service Design people hear a lot — “We need a map”.
We need a map 🫠
Once I had clarified with a traditional “what’s the problem you’re trying to solve” the request was in fact not to make a map — it was to help people with Covid symptoms find the help they needed under some extreme conditions.
For reasons of non-disclosure I probably cannot say who or what this was, but who am I to stop you finding my website with locked-down lockdown case studies.
An interesting user problem
My users were people who work in a hospital, who might not have English first language, who might have varying degrees of literacy, who will probably all be exhausted, and who all think or fear they have Covid.
They also cannot leave their current location until they have:
- Applied for a test
- Found the test location at a specific time
- Administered the self-test
- Submitted the materials
- Exited safely
All the while, not going near, talking to or breathing on another human.
That’s enough of the client case study because #NDA.
Here’s what it felt like as a designer. That’s the case study here.
