CareLink — a service design system connecting domestic helpers, agencies, and households with trust, structure, and transparency.
Domestic helpers are integral to many households, yet the systems around their hiring, onboarding, and daily work stay informal, fragmented, and often inequitable. CareLink examines this ecosystem and proposes a connected platform that brings structure, transparency, and trust to everyone involved.
Our research surfaced a system that worked largely through personal networks, agencies, and informal referrals rather than a shared digital structure.
Households often relied on referrals and word of mouth when deciding who to hire.
Profiles, experience, availability, and verification details were spread across agencies, conversations, and personal records.
For many helpers, agencies acted as the bridge between finding work, maintaining records, and building trust with households.
Differences in language, digital familiarity, and access to documentation affected how easily helpers could participate in a digital system.
These observations became the basis for looking beyond a simple hiring marketplace.
Instead of just a regular app, we designed a connected system that brings all stakeholders together. Core elements include:
Seven moments shaped CareLink: fieldwork, a validating survey, synthesis into a clear problem and market gap, How Might We questions, open ideation, a system model, and a grounding storyboard.
To understand the system in depth, we used a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods:
We studied all three stakeholders:
Workers seeking stable employment, fair wages, and recognition within the system.
Intermediaries that connect helpers to households, operating largely through manual, unstructured processes.
Households and professionals seeking reliable, verified domestic help for their daily needs.
The survey helped validate patterns observed during field research:
Four themes emerged from the research:
Households wanted confidence in who they were hiring, but the existing system offered little consistent way to verify experience or identity.
Rather than bypassing agencies, a digital service could strengthen the role they already play in verification, matching, and support.
Households wanted more information about helpers, while helpers needed control over what personal information was exposed and to whom.
A system could only work if helpers could understand, maintain, and benefit from their profiles without needing to become highly digitally literate.
This shifted our opportunity from building another domestic-help marketplace to creating a shared layer of trust between helpers, agencies, and households.
Existing platforms solve parts of the problem but not the system as a whole:
There is a clear opportunity for a system that balances trust + structure + affordability.
During synthesis, we hit a major design wall: households demanded complete transparency and background checks, but domestic helpers were deeply resistant to digitizing their personal documents due to privacy fears and institutional distrust.
Our research revealed a clear opportunity for a system that balances trust, structure, and affordability. These questions guided our design direction:
How might we create a transparent and trustworthy hiring system without compromising personal data privacy or intimidating vulnerable workers?
How might we improve awareness and access for domestic helpers?
How might we support both helpers and employers in case of conflicts?
How might we bring structure and agency-backed safety to an otherwise informal, high-friction ecosystem?
We explored multiple directions through a combination of structured and generative methods to surface patterns, themes, and potential interventions:
Key opportunity areas emerged:
Smart hiring kiosks
WhatsApp community-based hiring model
CareLink sits between three groups that already depend on one another:
Need access to opportunities, control over their information, and a reliable record of their experience.
Provide verification, matching, and ongoing support, but often manage this information manually.
Need confidence that the person they hire is experienced, verified, and available.
Rather than replacing these relationships, we designed CareLink to connect them.
The agency becomes a trusted verification layer, while CareLink gives each participant a clearer way to access and exchange information.
To ground the concept in real life, we developed a storyboard tracing the journey of a helper and an employer from first contact through resolution of a conflict, using CareLink at every step.
As an academic service-design project, CareLink wasn't piloted with a live agency, so impact here is framed as design intent — what each part of the system is built to change for the stakeholders it serves.
Verified profiles and background checks create a foundation of accountability for both helpers and employers.
Clear onboarding, contracts, and records replace informal, verbal-only agreements that leave room for exploitation.
Training modules, rights awareness, and emergency support give helpers visibility and agency within the system.
Designed to work for households across income levels, balancing premium features with essential access for all.
This project helped me understand how deeply social and economic factors shape design problems. What initially seemed like a simple hiring issue turned out to be a complex system involving trust, awareness, and power dynamics.
Considering every stakeholder, not just end users, was critical. The helpers, employers, agencies, and regulators each had different needs that the system had to address simultaneously.
If given more time, I would focus on usability testing specifically for the helper-facing interface to ensure low digital literacy isn't a barrier to their empowerment.