How ianacare built a federally-recognized caregiving platform with A.Team

The Challenge 

More than 90% of care occurs at home, rather than in hospitals. Yet, the vast majority of family caregivers (54 million+ in the US alone) receive zero support, training, or compensation. The lack of support ultimately drives 32% of family caregivers to leave their jobs to fulfill full-time care obligations.  

In 2017, ianacare (abbreviated from “I Am Not Alone” Care) was founded to address this widespread issue. Their mission: fundamentally change the at-home care experience. Ianacare’s platform acts as a command center for caregiving support and guidance. Their “navigators” are specialized individuals with healthcare backgrounds who conduct 1:1 meetings and help families and caregivers (“care teams”) find resources.

Ianacare initially launched as a mobile app. But as they evolved, they faced a critical inflection point – how could they shift to a truly accessible model for all caregivers, regardless of age, technological proficiency, or physical ability?

A mobile app has limitations for the elderly, and although we are getting better as an industry, “it is still challenging for the 70+ population, which is where a lot of the care recipients reside,” explained Faria Hassanianacare’s VP of Product.

Soon, a pattern emerged. Entire care teams would deactivate from ianacare because they weren’t comfortable using a mobile app: “We started to see that if one member of a care team couldn’t use the mobile app, the whole team left.” 

Perhaps that meant they needed the platform on the larger screen of a laptop or desktop computer, or they needed changing contrasts and color schemes to be more accessible. 

“When we make things better for one age group, we actually make it better for everybody. Everyone benefits,” Hassan said,  

The mandate was clear: create a seamless, user-friendly experience that could cater to tech-savvy millennials and older adults alike, while also accommodating users with various disabilities. It was time to build a web/desktop app.

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The Build

Ianacare’s development team spans multiple continents. They needed a product designer who could align across those different time zones.

After looking in all of the usual places – job boards, LinkedIn, etc. – Hassan felt that things weren’t moving quickly enough. She noted, “We did everything from searching for a full-time hire to speaking with other agencies. It was hard to find a qualified product designer with a deep startup background.”

Through an acquaintance, she learned about A.Team. Instantly, the candidate pool stood out: “Every single candidate was so much more relevant to what we needed.” Hassan suddenly had what she considered to be a “good problem” — a plethora of viable candidates. 

“We put up a video and got really good pre-vetted candidates,” Hassan said. “I was just blown away by how quickly the process moved and by the quality of the candidates. And then we found our superstar, JP.”

Unlike most companies that start with web or desktop applications and later develop mobile versions, iancare built its mobile app first. Their web-based solution would ideally complement — not simply replicate — their existing mobile offering.

That’s why they wanted a product designer who could be one-part strategist and one-part visionary:  “We needed someone who could look at the mobile app and then figure out what our desktop situation needed to be,” said Hassan. “Somebody who could take that level of direction and then just run with it. We needed someone who could ask the hard questions, and actually have an opinion.” 

Prior to JP’s arrival, ianacare did not have a cohesive design system. JP changed that by streamlining the entire design process, from ideation all the way to development and post-mortem. He introduced one unified design system, and did the hard job of moving the entire team off of Sketch and Zeplin over time, while introducing several design best practices. 

Two weeks in, JP had already created several design concepts for implementing the web app. “He was effective really fast. The concepts were mind-blowing,” Hassan said.

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Outcomes 

Ianacare chose “user retention” as a key success metric, particularly with respect to older users. Prior to the web app launch, ianacare routinely received five to six support tickets a month requesting deactivation for age or accessibility-related reasons. Post-launch, that number has dropped to zero. 

Hassan also noted a significant improvement in user experience, saying: "We no longer saw comments about care teams struggling to figure out the mobile app." This shift in attitude was proof – they had successfully enhanced accessibility for cross-generational users.

The new design system has allowed ianacare to consistently upgrade accessibility between the web app and the mobile app. Users may now move beyond the limitations of the mobile app, increasing overall engagement. They can see beyond the bounds of a six-inch phone screen. Ianacare is also working towards deeper ADA compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA) and will likely achieve it with its next release. 

They wouldn’t have pursued such an ambitious project without A.Team. “Without JP, we never would have undertaken the web app. Now, his impact will only grow,” Hassan said. “We wanted to work on product engagement once there was enough of a business case to validate it. A.Team has allowed us to move forward with confidence.”

Ianacare’s success was even further validated by qualitative user feedback: "We got more kudos from our premium users — our care teams," said Hassan. User tests they conducted came back with “overwhelmingly positive” feedback and insights. 

Another ancillary benefit has been sales-process improvements. Hassan noted, “Sales is so much easier because we can demo the app on a desktop screen. It’s nice to be able to pull up the web app and let the product sell itself while we’re pitching.” 

The most vital metric, however, goes beyond mere numbers or feedback. As Hassan explained: "The ultimate metric, of course, comes from a caregiver’s perspective: how often did caregiving at home prevent you from going to the ER?" 

Recently, ianacare was accepted into a funded eight-year federal program from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The initiative aims to provide resources to care teams of patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia, allowing patients to receive care at home for longer, without having to move around or rack up astronomical hospital bills. Ianacare’s expanded web capabilities allow them to cover more ground in their ambitious mission. 

“We wouldn’t have attempted the CMS program with just a simple mobile app,” Hassan said. “At the end of the day, to connect and chat with navigators and engage in team coordination - you need a web app.”