The video Q&A website from local professionals you can hire.
Context
The “find a” market is massive. From time to time we all need to find a therapist, a plumber, a babysitter or even a life partner. We used to have to choose from the provider in our local High Street or open up the local Yellow Pages but now the market has gone online.
Problem
As a customer it is tricky to find a provider who seems knowledgeable and trustworthy. A slick website is not necessarily a promise of excellent customer service.
As a provider it can be tricky to find customers who feel drawn to working with you and are ready to buy.
Solution
You need some help. Imagine if you were able to gather together all the relevant providers in your area and ask them the questions that are most important to you. When you hear an answer that speaks to you you can continue to ask questions until you either have the answer you were looking for or get a sense that this is a provider you would like to work with. This is the service View&A offers.
When a provider signs up to View&A they provide basic information and choose tags that describe the service they provide and the outcomes they can help with. They record a short video introduction and are then invited to record short video answers to questions related to their selected tags. The provider can skip questions and delete any answers they don’t like. However, they are not able to choose a specific question to answer – all questions are drawn at random and answers are spontaneous.
Users are able to view providers’ introductory videos or answers to a specific question. A question such as “How do you help people with anxiety?” would be answered by psychotherapists, acupuncturists, and karate instructors. These answers can be be filtered to only show providers who practice in their local area or who offer a specific service. When the user finds a provider they like they can click into their profile to watch more videos from their library and contact them to discuss the possibility of working together.
Implementation
I have built initial and technical prototypes for this idea.
To create my initial prototype I reached out to some local therapists and met with them. I asked asked random questions from a list and recorded their answers. I chopped these answers up, loaded them onto YouTube, and created a website linking to them.
I created the technical prototype as my Computer Science MSc project. I created a working website that worked from a provider and user.
For the provider it would:
- Ask a question at random from a list of potential questions
- Give the provider the option of skipping the question or answering it in 3 – 2 – 1 – Recording
- Record their answer
- Give them the ability to review their answer, delete it, or choose a thumbnail and save it to the cloud
For the user it would:
- Browse video thumbnails and watch videos
- Allow the user to save videos by liking them
- Browse provider profiles
- Contact providers
Here is the final report that includes screenshots showing the functionality of the site and explanations of the coding behind it. At the time of writing I was exploring alternative brand identities such as “ViewChoose”.
Outcomes
I applied for a Mayors award to fund this idea in 2023 but sadly was not shortlisted as a finalist. My potential collaborator Viggy had to return to India and so we have put the project on pause.