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First Design
Inspiration
Have you ever had to ask your grandchildren how your phone or apps work? Wouldn’t it be great if you had a personal tech support within a few seconds’ reach? Tech Heroes are here for you. Inspired by our very own parents and grandparents, we realized everyone’s digital journey is different and sometimes folks need a little bit of help along the way. What’s worse, sometimes you may feel that it is hard to ask for help or have given up. That’s why we created a volunteer-based tech support app, aiming to help anyone who needs a guiding hand along their digital journey in several languages. TechHero is currently available as a web application. Once a user opens the app in their browser, Tech Heroes are here to walk you through whatever challenge you are facing, big or small.
What it does
Our user-friendly, no-sign up required app or website only asks the user what language they would like to receive help in, and takes them to a wait queue where they can see the number of Tech Heroes currently active and their estimated wait time. Once a Tech Hero is available, the users will be connected via voice call, and a button will be available for them to share their screen. To maintain user privacy and confidentiality, our app will automatically apply a blurring effect on all text, allowing the Tech Heroes to only see the basic navigation interface. The user is able to undo this effect if required to resolve the question or issue. At the end of the session, the user will be asked two feedback questions:
- Was your problem solved?
- How would you rate your service?
For our Tech Heroes, we look for tech savvy individuals who want to lend a helping hand. To sign up, a name, email, region (country and province/state) and language skills (oral and written) is required, and a Code of Conduct needs to be agreed to. Tech Heroes can use aliases when providing support. Volunteering is flexible, Tech Heroes just need to login to the app, and they will see a list of users in queue and will be connected with a user on a first come first serve basis through a call. Once the call is connected and the user is sharing their screen, the Tech Hero can write & draw on the screen to visually guide the user through navigation. A Tech Hero will not be able to take control of the user’s device. On a monthly basis, Tech Heroes will receive summary reports on the number of people they have helped, their time invested, and user feedback received, which can be used to support community service requirements. Star volunteers will be showcased on our app homepage quarterly.
How we built it
The application is built in Python, Flask and HTML/CSS. It’s hosted on Heroku.
Challenges we ran into
Our main challenge was to make the user interface as simple as possible in order to cater to our target audience. We were able to achieve this by applying the cognitive style heuristics. For example, we anticipate most of our target audience will have a low computer self-efficacy. Therefore, they may not have the confidence to do unfamiliar tasks such as signing up for an account. In addition, they may not like to tinker to learn a new platform, and prefer clear instructions. We took this into account when developing the TechHero platform.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re proud of providing a solution for an everyday problem faced by many individuals throughout the world. We hope it will help bridge the digital skill gap and allow for a more inclusive society where everyone benefits from the advancements in technology.
What we learned
As mentioned in the Challenges section, we applied the cognitive style heuristics when developing our application. Our initial design did not take these principles into account. Upon our research, we learned to understand that not all individuals will have the same confidence as us when navigating through a new platform. By creating this application, we realized there are different cognitive style personas with various attitudes towards learning. It allowed us to understand how real world applications like Facebook and Slack are designed with different users in mind.
What's next for TechHero
First and foremost, TechHero is looking to partner with schools and community organizations to secure a stable and sustainable volunteer population, and to promote the app to the target user population. We plan to continue to expand support to more languages and extend our geographic reach beyond Canada. To recognize the efforts of our volunteers, we look for opportunities to work with sponsors to provide more incentives to be a volunteer. Further, we wanted to provide an opportunity for users to pay it forward and train to become a volunteer via a buddy system where they can shadow or partner with a volunteer.
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