The first step in this project was to generate ideas around problems in certain areas. At this stage, I wanted to just outline the problems rather than think of how to solve them. I selected four areas that could have issues I could solve, these being, health, travel, politics, and education. Some of these problems I put down were large problems, that probably wouldn’t be solvable with just a smartwatch app, but it’s better to have big ideas that I could then focus into areas of.
After initially getting my ideas down, I started linking up ideas or concepts that could work together to create new or evolved ideas. This part was trickier as I found it more difficult to connect the ideas, however, I think the few connections I got were strong ideas.
Next, I selected what I felt my strongest connected ideas were and started to brainstorm around them and how they could be solved. While I felt all my ideas were strong, I felt the strongest and most suited to this project was my idea of solving GP phone wait times with some sort of AI. Essentially I think you could use AI or a reverse-engineered chatbot to listen to the prerecorded queue position hold that you hear when calling your GP, and relay then display the queue position of a smartwatch, so that users don’t have to constantly listen to the call and will be alerted when at the front of the queue.
With my initial brainstorming complete, I wanted to take a step back and more systematically go through the discovery and research process before I got too ahead of myself.
Since the pandemic, the time users are put on hold while waiting to get through to a GP or receptionist has skyrocketed. 1 in 5 users say they have to wait at least 15 minutes to get through and users have reported up to 45 minutes to an hour in certain areas. Even if you call as soon as the lines open, it’s more than likely you’ll have a substantial wait to speak to someone. Outside of purely GP’s, hold times are often annoyingly high. I have recently called both the passport office and university help desks and both times I was presented with an over 15-minute wait. While leaving the phone on the speaker is an option, the frequent changes between music and prerecorded messages become exceptionally annoying, and the change can trick you into thinking you are through. Using speaker though also relies on you not being in public, meaning that waiting on hold can take over your day as you can neither walk away from your phone nor do things around other people.
In an ideal world, the best solution to this problem would be to reduce queue times by hiring more staff or having better systems etc, however, that sort of solution is out of my reach. Rather than end the queues, I think I can come up with a solution to make queues less of a problem for users.
To achieve this, I envision a smartwatch app that uses an AI or chatbot to listen to the pre-recordings that are being played on the phone which will then relay the information regarding queue position to the smartwatch for the user to view. In doing so, the user will be able to go about their day as usual, until the app alerts the user to them nearing or reaching the end of the queue. The user will then be able to return to their phone and proceed with the call.
I feel this is a strong idea and could work at freeing up the time spent waiting in phone queues. I’m pleased I managed to arrive at this idea and feel I went through a good ideation process to reach this idea.
While I recognise that my user base for this project is extremely broad, I felt that an empathy map would be useful at keeping me focussed on what I want to achieve due to how short this project is. I created one quickly by talking to someone I knew who had experienced issues with calling their GP and feel that they helped me realise some things about my users. Mainly their motivations were the biggest things I learnt from doing this. When I wrote the motivations as “Their Health” and “Needing Information” I realised just how basic and essential these things were, and that this is something that is not easily accessed at the moment. Doing this has made me realise that this project is trying to solve a fundamental flaw in our healthcare system which has motivated me for this project.
I also realised one of the biggest issues wasn’t just having to wait on hold, but how much of their time it took up having to wait, and how much it interrupted their day. I think this is something really important for me to consider in this project as I should focus on how these people can get on with their normal life while waiting on hold.
