In October, the Adult Social Care Accelerator helped South Korean startup LBStech to learn what changes they would need to make to their wheelchair navigation app to launch successfully in the UK.
Accessible Wheelchair Navigation
For many wheelchair users, current navigation tools such as Google Maps are not useful, suggesting routes that are inaccessible by wheelchair, and often fail to direct users to the accessible entrances to buildings.
WheelAR provides routes optimised for wheelchair users, easy to follow navigation, and accessibility information at their destination such as entrance types.
As part of an innovation exchange programme between Thames Freeport and Seoul Digital Foundation, LBSTech were selected to trial their solution in the UK.
The Adult Social Care Accelerator helped the LBStech team find and recruit wheelchair users to test their app in the UK. They hoped to understand the differences between South Korea and the UK to inform their product development ahead of a launch in the UK. The LBStech team conducted five research sessions with users navigating from Barking Station to Barking Town Hall with WheelAR’s augmented reality directions.Â
Uncovering Insights
The team uncovered some technical challenges posed by temporary street furniture, like market stalls interfering with the navigation and the varied quality and styles of UK pavements. They also found behavioural differences between UK and South Korean wheelchair users. For instance, smartphone holders to keep wheelchair users’ hands-free are widely used in Seoul but not in the UK, requiring changes to the app’s interface to accommodate a different pattern of usage.
These lessons have been very helpful for LBStech to prepare their app for a UK market entry and for use specifically in Barking and Dagenham.
“This has been a great opportunity to learn about the English market and how it differs from South Korea. We look forward to improving WheelAR and hope to launch in Barking.â€
Min Jik Kim, LBStech Team Manager
About the Adult Social Care Accelerator
As our over-65 population continues to expand and more of those individuals face chronic conditions that require long-term care, the UK care system faces increased pressure. We believe that technology can help ease this crisis by helping elderly people stay independent for longer and by reducing the burden on carers.
The Adult Social Care Accelerator is an innovation accelerator that tests new technologies from around the world with a network of forward-thinking care providers. The Accelerator scales the most impactful solutions across the care ecosystem by connecting corporates, local authorities, and the communities we serve.Â