Virtual assistant survey review - People Bank involvement

Overview

East Sussex County Council is running a pilot, providing Amazon Alexa devices to clients of Adult Social Care, to support them with daily tasks and activities. The aim is to see if the device improves their independence, health, and wellbeing. At the end of the pilot participants will complete a survey to share feedback on their experience of the Amazon Alexa. We asked a People Bank member to user test this survey.

Our user tester said:

1. It needs to ask when they started using the Alexa and how often more clearly.
2. The answer options for how they use their Alexa do not feel appropriate and overlap.
3. It is not asked if they are doing new things with their Alexa.
4. Asking how often the person falls since using the Alexa feels confusing.
5. Asking about the Alexa’s impact on hours of care needed should have an explanation box.
6. More context is needed for asking how confident people are using their Alexa and to identify if they had any issues using it and how they managed these.
7. Asking if they would recommend the Alexa to someone with care needs is hard to answer based on the differences between the people the respondent is considering.
8. Some wording could be improved such as ‘living with the Alexa’.

How we responded:

1. Amended the question to ask the specific month and year they started to use their Alexa, as well as amending the answer options for how often they use it.
2. The answer options have been replaced with categories for types of activity including those in the project Terms of Reference.
3. Incorporated asking if they use their Alexa for things they would not have done before.
4. Restructured the question to provide clear context on identifying the Alexa’s effect on health and wellbeing including falls, as a result of the Alexa doing tasks for them.
5. This question has been removed and incorporated into the health and wellbeing question, which includes a free text box to explain their answer.
6. This question was removed and replaced with a question regarding how easy or difficult it was to use. The new question asks them to explain difficulties they faced and how they overcame them too.
7. Question amended to ask if they would recommend a virtual assistant to anyone in general to support them in the home.
8. Wording amended to ‘using the Amazon Alexa’.

Thanks to insight from the People Bank, we have been able to make the survey questions more appropriate and deepen the learning from the pilot project - Project Lead.