THE CHALLENGE
The brief was a facelift.
The problem was who the app was built for.
A programme worth real money: retail discounts through commercial partners, school-fee payments, and health and education benefits for members’ children. Yet the welfare office was drowning in calls for information the app already held. The client read it as an aesthetic problem: a dated, cold interface that didn’t look like a caring employer. The brief was a visual redesign.
THE GROUNDWORK
Before redesigning anything, we sorted every support call by caller and reason, listened in on the helpdesk, interviewed members and their families, and read the app’s usage data.
DEFENCE WELFARE PROGRAMME
A welfare app rebuilt around the household.
THE TURNING POINT
78% of the calls came from spouses, not service members.
The member held the login. The spouse ran the household: the school fees, the health claims, the family discounts. Locked out, the spouse picked up the phone. A new visual design would have changed nothing, because the person who needed the app most still couldn’t open it.
THE APPROACH
THE IDEA
Stop redesigning a screen. Transform how the programme serves a household.
WHAT WE BUILT
Four parts that meet at the household, with AI where the routine work was.
THE RESULTS
AGAINST THE OBJECTIVE
Lift engagement across 100,000+ members, cut the cost of manual support, and make the programme read as a caring employer.
Letting the household in turned a security risk into a commercial asset:
partners finally reached the people who spend.
Role : led strategy and service design with a team of three, and stayed with engineering through implementation.