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In 2020, co-founders Kate Maslen (a disability support worker) and Jordan Freeman (a senior delivery manager) started a journey to create Ariel.
Ariel is a disability inclusion app that focuses on making the world more accessible and visible for the disability community.
Initially, I was involved in Ariel as a design consultant, but in 2021, I became a director and the chief design officer to support and guide the future of the company.
Globally, 1 in 6 people have a disability, making them the largest minority segment of the consumer population. However, people with disability (PWD) are often a neglected demographic:
As a disability support worker, Kate was consistently struggling to find available activities and establishments that would cater to the specific needs of her clients, so with the support of Jordan she had an idea: what if there was an app that showed the user all of the available disability facilities and services of organisations and businesses? One that allowed the disability community to filter the world by their needs, be it: accessible indoor and outdoor seating, sensory-friendly environments, allowing assistance animals, or at-home delivery services.
What could we create with our available budget that would give the most return to the community?
We took an iterative approach to ideate through possible paths. Once we had agreed on different approaches through workshops and design sessions, we validated the ideas by speaking to the disability community directly and throwing a variety of events. Since Kate and Jordan were so immersed in the community, it meant that gaining access to the necessary perspectives was simple.
The first round of research was a combination of qualitative interviews and quantitative questionnaires. This gave us the necessary information to start designing the first version of the app, and invest in a team to develop it.
A comprehensive digital ecosystem that contains:
The mobile app is the key ingredient to Ariel, however, every app needs its supporting apps. So along with the native application, we created a business portal to facilitate account creation and subscription payments.
As the applications were being made, we knew that we’d need branding and a brochure site to sell the thing. I now had my first task as the resident designer.
The business model works on the basis that businesses pay a subscription fee to be on the application, thereby increasing their market presence in the community.
But ultimately, the app has been created to help the world, with the aim of getting as many businesses on the app as possible and showing the disability community what options are available to them. So we created a free subscription method where businesses can sign up, list their features, but have restricted access to some of the features Ariel has to offer.
The paid subscription (at a very reasonable price) allows businesses to add more images and a more in-depth description of their establishment while also allowing them to promote their social media pages.
The core concept is that up till now the disability and business communities have been separate, with little effort made to connect the two. Ariel is here to connect, assist, and strengthen the relationship between the two groups, offering visibility of businesses and their facilities to PWDs and offer market opportunities to businesses.
These colour associations are then reused throughout the digital and print content to reinforce the demographic or function.
The app is designed for PWDs, care workers, guardians or family members to easily filter all of the available businesses around them by specific filters. The first version of the app has done a fantastic job of proving the concept to businesses and the disability community.
It’s also given us deep insights into user navigational behaviour, and showed us where we needed to update sections to comply with accessibility standards.
We’ve slowly been incrementing and improving the app to be as user friendly as possible whilst still working in the same foundational code base.
Whether an app succeeds or not can come down to “Does this look professional and legitimate?" and with that in mind, I created the brochure site from scratch to best exhibit the app’s functionality as clearly as possible, solidify the brand, and sell the concept to both communities.
It was created in Webflow due to its customisability, low-code functionality, and CMS capabilities.
It became apparent quickly that a major part of the problem in connecting businesses to the disability community was a gap in knowledge.
Businesses weren’t aware of the facilities that they were missing to cater to a number of different disabilities, or even that a number of different types of disabilities existed.
We created the knowledge hub in order to share information about how to become more accessible, how to implement solutions, and how to better connect with the community. It’s also become a useful space for sharing stories of how ariel has helped the community, providing updates on the company, and promoting ariel's initiatives and events.
The business portal supports businesses in creating their account, managing their subscriptions, and creating their business listings.
Currently, it’s a necessary but basic application; it does everything that we need it to to support ariel and its users, but it’s got massive potential and a very promising future.
We’ve been building traction at an incredible rate with both communities, and there’s no sign of slowing down.
The feedback from PWDs, businesses, care workers, and industry professionals has been overwhelming positive, with helpful advice and suggestions about where to take the applications, business, and ultimately the industry.
We’ve been expanding into new regions within the New South Wales state of Australia, with plans to extend to other Australian states within the year.
The plan for the near future is to take the product into the international market, starting with New Zealand and then Europe, initially looking to countries that follow similar health care practices to Australia.
Over the course of the last year, the team has been tirelessly exploring different directions to take the app and business that will return the most value. After many workshops (hosted by yours truly), we’ve created a roadmap for where we’re going, and the future is exciting.
Version 2 of the app will simplify the user interface, reducing the cognitive load (urggh buzzword) as much as possible to make using the app as pleasant as possible.
The biggest improvement will be a reinvigorated search experience that has been community-led; it will streamline finding businesses by remembering specific user criteria and reducing the number of steps to get results.
We’re also improving the database to allow for subcategories with more specific filter options.
These features, combined with in-depth screen reader reviews, voice assistants, and voice search functionality, will assist a greater number of different PWD user types.
The new business portal aims to improve existing functionality while also including a host of new features. Using the same process as the mobile app, we researched and strategised which of the new functionality was going to benefit business users the most, and then created a roadmap of how and when we're going to roll out the new features.
Currently, the business portal can only cater to one business per account; this is an issue for larger enterprises that have many different businesses that they want to house under the same account. The new design of the portal will allow business customers to customise their subscription plans to allow for the necessary number of businesses and application users for their organisation.
The newly designed dashboard will show how much traction their individual businesses have had with regards to hits, contact, and social media engagement.
With a new payment gateway, the business portal will be simpler to use and offer more insights and options to business users that can cater to their needs.
One of the most exciting concepts is the inclusion of ‘offers and deals’. This will allow paid accounts to display specific offerings to the disability community and other businesses that will increase their market offering, increase employment opportunities within the disability community, and foster partnerships within the business community aimed at creating a more inclusive and accessible world.
