INTRODUCTION
Ameelio is building free-to-use communications technology to create a more humane and rehabilitative corrections system. During my internship, I developed a new e-messaging feature for Connect, one of Ameelio’s platforms supporting incarcerated populations, family members, and correctional officers.
👩💻 Type: Internship
💡 Role: Product Designer and UX Researcher
🧰 Tools: Figma, Whimsical
🗓️ Timeline: June - August 2021
PROBLEM SPACE
1. Prison communications are expensive, posing an obstacle to family contact.
While increased family contact can reduce recidivism by 56%, the cost of staying in touch with an incarcerated loved one forces 1 in 3 families into debt. On average, family members of incarcerated people must pay 50 cents for a text message, and an extra 50 cents for individual photo attachments. As a result, incarcerated people often feel pressure to limit their communications with their family because of the financial burden it imposes.
To address this, Ameelio decided to build a free-to-use e-messaging system to help family members and incarcerated people stay in touch without any financial burden.
2. Competing prison communication platforms are difficult to navigate and intimidating.
Not only are other, existing prison communication platforms costly, they are also very unreliable and difficult to navigate. Often, family members feel like they are left in the dark about the status of their messages and experience frequent communication delays.
TARGET METRICS
Net-promoter score (NPS) of 30 for Incarcerated People and Family Members.
STAKEHOLDERS
For this project, I designed two different versions of the e-messaging platform: one for family members and friends in the free world and one for incarcerated people to use in their facilities. Each stakeholder group had a different set of product requirements and constraints, which were outlined before beginning the project.
PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS + CONSTRAINTS
Product requirements were gathered by researching existing, widely-used prison communication platforms and using them as benchmarks to identify user pain points, core functionality, and expected features.
Family Members
Incarcerated Loved Ones
WIREFRAMING
Using the product requirements and design constraints, I created two versions (A and B) of low-fidelity wireframes in Whimsical for each stakeholder group.
1. Family members
I prioritized clearly indicating the different message statuses to make the communication process more transparent and accessible. I also created a similar UX/UI to other chat platforms to make the experience more user friendly than other prison communication platforms.
For Version A, I used a color coding system to indicate the different message statues, while Version B relied on icons next to the message bubbles and pop-up notifications explaining the different statues.
2. Incarcerated people
I worked to create a simple and streamlined flow that would be easy to navigate without having previous texting or e-messaging experience, as many incarcerated people have had little-to-no interaction with social media or chat platforms.
As with family members, Version A has a color coding system to indicate the different message statues, while Version B relied on icons next to the message bubbles and pop-up notifications explaining the different statues.
TESTING
Prototyping
To test my lo-fi mock-ups, I created a click-through prototype that had users engage in a complete chat conversation with various message statuses. Using this prototype, I conducted a series of A/B tests with users from each stakeholder group.
To prepare for the user interviews, I wrote an interview script with a specific series of tasks and questions to assess the usability of the two prototypes for each stakeholder group.
User Personas
To test the prototype for family members, I spoke with four Ameelio users who have incarcerated family members: 2 viewed Version, 2 viewed Version B. These users were represented by the persona of "Max."
To test the prototype for incarcerated people, I spoke with four Ameelio users who were previously incarcerated: 2 viewed Version A, 2 viewed Version B. These users were represented by the persona "Angelina."
Key Insights
– For both stakeholder groups, users preferred Version B that used icons to indicate the different message statuses over the color-coding of Version A.
– The ability to click on the icons next to the message bubbles for more information was not always apparent to users.
– Users appreciated the thorough pop-up explanations.
– The difference between “rejected” messages and messages that failed to send due to network issues was not clear enough.
– Need to add a message status for when a connection has a message rejected to explain possible delays in communication.
SOLUTION
Leveraging Ameelio’s existing design system for Connect, I used the findings of my user research to create high-fidelity wireframes for the e-messaging platform.
Explore the final solution below 👇
NEXT STEPS
– Develop premium subscription that enables family members to send additional photos each week
– Build capacity to send video attachments
– Research the feasibility for a voice-to-text option that enables incarcerated people to dictate texts or have texts read aloud to them