Tribe | Embedding human-centred design into the development of a social care tech innovation
Humanly worked with Bronze Labs and partners over 2 years to embed human-centred design into the development of Tribe, a UKRI-funded social tech innovation.
In 2020 Tribe was awarded a share of £23 million in funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the Healthy Ageing Challenge, which helps social ventures to develop and deliver services and products that support people as they age, along with innovative business models to help them be adopted at scale.
This saw a unique consortium of partners come together from across the technology and care sectors to develop and implement Tribe. Led by Bronze Labs, the developer of Tribe, this consortium of partners included Carers UK, Shared Lives Plus, Skills for Care, SCIE, TSA and more.
Humanly was brought in to lead a human-centred design process to develop key features of the Tribe offer, explore key considerations for successful implementation of the service, and embed practices to ensure that user needs are kept at the heart of future development.
About Tribe
“The mission of Tribe is to increase social action, improving the quality of life for millions of people. Through use of applied technology we will reduce pressure on public services to address the care challenges across the UK.”
- Richard Howells, Founder of Tribe
Tribe addresses national care inequality at a local level, by using a digital platform that connects those seeking care with independent care providers.
People can use Tribe to find, manage and personalise their care and support. It enables people to connect with local support providers that suit their requirements, offering choice and control, consistent relationships, and better value for money.
Care and support providers are offered flexibility, freedom, and control over how they deliver support, and are equipped with the tools to do so. Tribe enables providers to manage their care and support services in one place, from finding suitable clients to managing agreements, schedules and payments. This provides the opportunity to earn more by working directly with clients, as well as other benefits including access to flexible, industry-recognised training.
The Process
Humanly engaged a wide range of potential Tribe users in research and co-creation activities to build a solid understanding of the barriers and enablers to receiving and delivering good care. We also sought to learn about people’s lives more broadly, including their support networks, current experiences of care and use of technology, to gain insight into how Tribe can best support people to access and deliver good care.
Humanly tested the key hypotheses that underpinned Tribe with participants, for example people’s appetite for sourcing care via a digital platform. This hypothesis was quickly proven, with enormous enthusiasm shown for the concept amongst both people arranging care and care workers.
A major finding was the alignment of frustrations with the current care system, and hopes for an alternative, amongst both user groups. These included dissatisfaction around the rates charged by private care providers versus the rate of pay received by care workers, and the desire to be able to work with the same people on a regular basis to enable the formation of strong relationships and the best possible care for individuals.
Following the generation of key insights and ideas, Humanly moved into low-fidelity prototyping to test key aspects of Tribe. This ranged from exploring approaches to setting up and maintaining good care relationships, to supporting users to create effective user profiles, to systems for reporting concerns.
An extremely agile and flexible testing process was employed by Humanly, enabling the results of prototyping to rapidly inform Tribe as it was developed.
The Outcomes
More than 50 people with lived experience of receiving, arranging or providing care were meaningfully involved in the co-creation of Tribe.
Tribe was inspired by first-hand experience of the challenges faced by people arranging care, with the goal of keeping users at the centre of the platform’s development. The approach taken by Humanly enabled people with lived experience of care to truly shape the development of this innovation.
A deeper understanding was developed of Tribe’s target users, including their lived experiences as well as their needs and desires from the service.
A number of pivotal insights were generated through this participatory, co-creative process, leading to a user-led minimum viable product (MVP) that met key user needs and desires.
Alongside the delivery of key insights and recommendations for the Tribe platform, Humanly enabled continuous improvement of Tribe driven by user needs. This included the delivery of 9 personas and their user journeys, a service blueprint, and a model for co-production to keep users at the heart of ongoing development.
The personas and user journeys developed were informed by the real-life experiences of those involved in our human-centred design process, and spanned a wide range of needs, characteristics and circumstances to ensure that design decisions are inclusive for all users.
Moreover, Humanly set up the Bronze Labs team to embed user insight and co-creation practices into their delivery model, through establishing feedback loops, routinely gathering user feedback at key moments, and identifying where more in-depth user involvement is required to explore an issue or potential new feature.
The Impact
The delivery of detailed guidance and assets to support ongoing human-centred design and co-production have enabled Bronze Labs to continue to meaningfully engage people with lived experience of care in the continual development of Tribe.
Since the completion of Humanly’s work, Tribe is now operational in a number of different local authority areas, with ambitious plans to scale across the UK and internationally.
Tribe has gone on to win multiple awards including being recognised by the United Nations as one of the top ten global innovations in healthy ageing as part of the WSIS Healthy Ageing Innovation Prize.