Kickoff: 2012
Sidekick School Client : CarersUK
Status: live
Care. From anywhere
The story
Jointly
How can we look after those who are losing the ability to look after themselves, and how much will it impact our lives?
A Problem That Matters
3 million people in the UK juggle unpaid care with a paid job. They can find it hard to get help, both in and outside the workplace, and 1 in 5 ends up leaving work to care. This simply doesn’t add up, either for the social economy – which needs families and communities to keep caring as we live longer – or for the economy – which needs people to work longer to pay growing health, care and pensions bills.
A Little-Big Idea
Care is a massive issue. Nothing seems to be joined up. Communication with professional care workers and health-care services is hard. Co-ordinating with friends and families is tough. Keeping medical journal isn't easy. There's taking care of finance. There's never enough time in the day. It's all very lonely. In all this complexity, our simple insight is that whilst project management is the surface issue, the real problem and opportunity is in improving communication between different players in the system.
Product Vision
Introducing Jointly, a mobile application that makes caring a bit easier by making it a lot more organised. Unlike other tools in the market aimed at carers, we decided to focus relentlessly on four key areas:
(1) communications (over project management),
(2) a native mobile experience,
(3) simplicity,
(4) openness/hackability (allowing people to create their own Jointly experience).
Tapping into more natural behaviours of people sharing the care, we are building a product that facilitates open, shared, group interactions that ultimately make caring coordination effortless and useful rather than a burden.
Design & Build
Since Jointly is a group communication & coordination tool we debated for a while which platform should we build for. That was the most difficult decision we had to make. What would be the best use of Sidekick School resource to be able to Build-Measure-Learn while working with the constraints of the context. We knew that the sentiment of "if you're not embarrassed by the way your first version looks like you probably launched it too late" could be problematic when you design for older, none digital natives users in a very stressful context. We end up building a native iOS app, a mobile web app for all other users and a sweet API that holds everything together.
How it works
How Jointly works:
(1)Start by creating your private 'Circle of Care'. Invite in anyone whom you consider a part of the close circle of family and friends who share the care with you and should always be ‘in the loop'. Once they’ve accepted your invitation you are ready to start
(2)Communicate with private and secure group messaging. Communicate on the go, from anywhere, with everyone in your circle with this simple messaging timeline. It works just like text messaging only it’s for group and it’s cheaper.
(3) Shared lists will help you organise and store any important information. You can create as many lists as you want for the things that are important for your collaborative caring. Todos, Finance, Medications, Holidays, these private shared lists are accessible from everywhere and will help everyone to always stay on top of everything.
Jointly V.1 now in public beta
Jointly V1 is now available on the app store (and as a mobile web app), click here to find out how to get it.
We have started user testings facilitated by carers UK and their relationship with major employers through their Employers for Carers network.
It's time for measuring and learning. Watch this space for updates.
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