Travel Hands

Travel Hands is a service designed to ease the outdoor commute of VIP (Visually Impaired People) by pairing them with sighted & verified volunteers to walk together to similar destinations.

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Inspiration

Traveling safely, cheaply and independently is challenging for 285 million VIP around the world. Covid-19 has made it even tougher for them to move around in the city as they normally require physical assistance to navigate. In London, travelling is twice as expensive and double the time for VIP as compared to people with sight for similar distance.

Drawing the comparison of an example of a short journey from a given ‘Point A’ to ‘Point B’ in London:

For a person with sight, this involves:

  1. Walking- Point A to Station 1 – 10 minutes - for free
  2. Tube ride- Station 1 to Station 2 – 20 minutes - Cost £2.40
  3. Walking- Station 2 to Point B – 5 minutes - for free Total time taken – 35 minutes at a cost of £2.40

The same journey made by a VIP involves: Taxi - Point A to Station 1 – 25 minutes - £2.50 Tube ride- Station 1 to Station 2 – 30 minutes (TFL staff help required, not available in all stations) - Free Taxi - Station 2 to Point B – 15 minutes - £2.50 Total time taken – 70 minutes at a cost of £5.00

What it does

Travel Hands is an app designed to ease the outdoor commute of VIP (Visually Impaired People) by pairing them with sighted & verified volunteers to walk together to similar destinations ensuring a safe, convenient, and inexpensive travel experience. The service launched on May 2021 in London with 10% WOW growth on journeys. A short video on Travel Hands -https://bit.ly/33siHUc

A VIP can submit a trip request that is automatically sent to a volunteer near them, alerting the volunteer to their location. The accepting volunteer will then come and pick the VIP up and walk towards the requested destination.

VIP pay a £15 monthly subscription and get to travel safely, inexpensively and independently. Next of kin is updated about journeys in the Travel Hands app. Volunteers help VIP in a flexible way and walk more. They are vetted by the Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) offered by the UK government and paid by us. Also, they are provided with an online training, consisting of a Volunteer Handbook document & a short video instruction on how to assist a VIP in walking, guiding and resolving small issues that may arise. Followed by a self-assessment test and once they pass, they are paired with nearby VIP on their journeys.

As an additional incentive to volunteers, the distance walked with VIP is converted to points, points then converted to goodies as incentives from affiliated companies that seek and value their customers under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. (www.travelhands.co.uk)

How we built it

Travel Hands is created by team VIP World, designing user friendly websites, apps and services for VIP by following technical guidelines and by user testing with VIP World community. (www.vipworldservices.com) Travel Hands is created with human-centered design approach. The community shared that the travelling challenges they faced day to day and how their ego gets hurt on not being able to travel outdoors with fear. An incidence with the community members instigated the idea behind Travel Hands and then we began with the research. link - https://bit.ly/3oliVGe

Challenges we ran into

We had prepared the Travel Hands prototype in Feb 2020 but the lockdowns delayed the testing of the prototype and we could not build it. The community was facing huge problems because of in-accessibility of online tools, further alarmed due to COVID. However, we persisted and took care of our community by engaging through various means and have been strengthening each month. https://www.facebook.com/groups/vipworldcommunity

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our tech for good start up has progressed consistently since the inception of the project in 2019 despite the lockdowns posed by COVID 19: -VIP World community is 550+ on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and phone contacts. -Travel Hands launched in London with 40+ VIP, 100+ Volunteers on May 2021 with a call centre approach to validate the assumptions in our prototype. -Grant funding by Innovate UK, Sport England and Geovation Accelerator (£200,000) for Travel Hands. -Team VIP World is 12 member strong (3 full time and 9 part time) -Creating rapid partnerships with charities, corporates and voluntary organisations

What we learned

We have learned immensely from the experience in the last 18 months. Travel Hands will improve the lives of VIP, reduce government spending on related public services and reduce carbon emissions. It will:

  • Ensure that VIP save on average 30 minutes for every journey undertaken and £100 on travel costs per month.
  • Create new social interactions and explore opportunities in life that they never enjoyed before.
  • Be user friendly to VIP by following accessibility good practice and be informed by the user perspective and experience.
  • Give VIP access to the VIP World Community platform that will help them to practice their IT skills and provide encouragement for each other, in particular in the field of employment.
  • Reduce carbon emission by reducing the use of taxi and single-mode transportation by VIP.
  • Improve physical and mental health by encouraging walking and social interaction.

What's next for Travel Hands

We are testing the service currently and have conducted journeys for our user base in London - https://fb.watch/680fdGfom1/ Based on our testing, we have verified the assumptions made in the prototype and will now focus on building the mobile app.

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