Eleos
Helping a mental health startup define scope and business goals
PROJECT OVERVIEW
ROLE:
Product Designer
TEAM OF 1:
Product Designer
What I Did:
User Research, Defining Project Scope and Business Goals
Outcome:
A new direction and defined scope
Background
Being a parent of a child with autism is a challenging experience, and many of these parents struggle to navigate the experience due to lack of knowledge, resources in the area, and/or finances.
The Medicaid Waiver is a waiver that allows parents to get access to services for their child free of charge through the state of New York. However, the process is extremely hard to navigate and leaves parents feeling confused. Additionally, many parents do not even realize that such a waiver exists.
My client came to me wanting to simplify this process and help parents easily navigate the process. He needed a proper foundation for his startup, Eleos , and a person that could refine his large ideas into a concrete vision. His goal was for our efforts to culminate into an iOS app.
DISCOVER
Building a Solid Foundation
Going into this project, I knew that Eleos needed a good platform to store information, organize meetings, and align the entire team with the organization’s goals. This would be especially essential when outside parties wanted to join the team and the the company began to scale up. I decided to use Notion to map out our plan and document data.
Understanding the Space
Initially I was very uneasy since this was not a space I was very familiar with. I took a lot of time to understand the space of Medicaid waivers and where the company hoped to be.
Research Plan
We crafted a research plan to compliment our secondary sources. Here are the topics I wanted our research to answer:
We need to explore how families currently feel about the process of finding and accessing services for their special needs child/children as well as what struggles they face
We need to see how informed families are in finding services for their children
Getting Input From Families
I created a survey to target caretakers of special needs children. This was one area that was particularly challenging because I knew it was a sensitive topic that many may be skeptical speaking about. I also had to be careful to craft the language in a way that was accessible and easily understood by a wide range of people. I worked with the CEO to go through two iterations of surveys to improve on the language. The survey also let parents indicate if they were available for interviews. Since time was of the essence, we decided to collect data for 2 weeks and spread our reach as far as possible.
Results
50 Survey Responses
8 Parent Interviews
DEFINE
Synthesis and Main Problems
Despite not receiving as large of a data pool as I would have liked, it was understandable given the sensitive information we were collecting. I advised that we continuously collect survey data and interviews throughout the entirety of the project. My reasoning being that more data would always be useful at any point in the project length and can always be utilized in the future.
Parent Struggles:
Not knowing where to start in the process of finding help for child
Being overwhelmed with juggling added responsibility of a special needs child with everyday responsibilities
Medicaid Waiver Process is confusing and long
Identifying Our North Star
We must find a way to help parents navigate complex Medicaid waiver process and become more informed on how they can best support their autistic child.
Coming to an Epiphany
After clearly defining our problem, the team needed to discuss where we should go next and begin to ideate. However, there was one glaring problem that had been overlooked from the start and that the research truly highlighted:
Why do we need an app?
After doing all of the research and defining a problem statement, I brought up an important point to our CEO: “If our goal is to help these parents that have special needs children, why is an app the way to go?”. The Medicaid waiver process must be conducted by the state and has several different state agencies that a person has to go through in order to receive benefits. Third parties can assist, but it is not process that can be completely handled through and app or single organization. I had initially imagined that our service could function in a way similar to TurboTax, where forms can be submitted and filled out solely through our service. However, this is not possible with the Medicaid Waiver process.
What the parents of these children truly need is someone they can consult with and someone to let them know what forms they need to submit, who to submit them to, and how to submit them. Ultimately, these parents need to be empowered with knowledge and hands-on assistance when it comes to navigating this process and getting help for their child. Coming into the project, the goal should not have been an application outright. The true value that Eleos can provide is through consulting and providing hands on support to the people it wants to help. Eleos should be a service first, and any app that it creates should only serve as a supplement.