Alcohol Assessment Rebuild for Community Engagement
Organisation: Drinkaware
Role: Junior UX Designer (led UX design in collaboration with the project lead and working group)
Overview
Following the decommissioning of the original AUDIT C tool on the Drinkaware website, I partnered with the project lead to rebuild a sustainable, user-friendly version for use in community and partnership settings. The goal was to create a proof of concept—demonstrating that we could successfully deliver the tool in-house while making it accessible, engaging, and meaningful for underserved audiences seeking to understand their drinking risk.
What is AUDIT-C?
AUDIT-C (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test - Consumption) is a validated three-question screening tool used to identify hazardous drinking patterns or potential alcohol use disorders.
Goals & Objectives
Rebuild the AUDIT C tool using a platform (Typeform) suitable for flexible, community-based deployment
Demonstrate the feasibility of delivering the tool in-house as a proof of concept
Ensure the tool was intuitive and engaging for participants, while straightforward for facilitators to administer
Design for integration within existing Drinkaware partnerships with room for iteration and growth
Enable easy data collection and reporting to support ongoing evaluation and impact assessment
Problem/ Challenge
Rebuilding the AUDIT C tool wasn’t just a technical task — it was a service design challenge. The original tool had been decommissioned, leaving a gap in Drinkaware’s ability to support behaviour change in community and partnership settings. But simply recreating the tool would have fallen short.
We needed to:
Rebuild trust with external partners who used the previous version.
Design for dual users — both participants and facilitators — with different needs and expectations.
Work within tight content restrictions, as the AUDIT C questions and responses are standardised and cannot be altered.
Ensure the tool was safe and supportive, not just functional — especially given the sensitive nature of the results.
Create something technically lightweight and sustainable, but also professionally credible in clinical and community contexts.
Discovery and Planning
During discovery, we explored Typeform as the delivery platform, assessing its suitability from a usability and accessibility standpoint.
To structure and guide the work, we created user stories for two core user types:
Participants: individuals completing the alcohol assessment
Facilitators: professionals administering the tool in community settings
We also developed user stories for broader project considerations, including:
Reporting requirements — what data insights would be valuable
GDPR compliance — how data would be collected, stored, and shared responsibly
Organisational goals — how the tool would support Drinkaware’s strategy
Partner needs — ensuring the tool was flexible and useful in external partnership settings
These stories helped define functional requirements beyond the user interface and ensured alignment across teams from the outset.
Research and Ideation
I mapped the logic of the AUDIT C and examined the broader service pathway that would need to support it. It quickly became clear that the tool couldn’t exist in isolation — it had to be embedded within a holistic, structured process to ensure safe and appropriate use for everyone involved.
Facilitators wouldn’t just present the questions — they might need to guide participants through the experience, interpret sensitive results, and provide or signpost to follow-up care. Without a clear process in place, participants could be left without support, and facilitators could be placed in vulnerable or unclear positions, particularly if difficult situations arose.
Although the core questions and response options couldn’t be changed, I explored how supplementary content could improve clarity and make the tool more accessible and relevant to users.
I then prototyped a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) using Typeform, ensuring the tool was simple, intuitive, and suitable for both key user groups. To support consistency and brand trust, the tool also followed Drinkaware’s existing design scheme, aligning it with the wider digital estate.
Design and Iteration
User flow for the Audit-C tool
Working in close collaboration with the product owner (and project lead), I led on the UX design of the AUDIT-C tool. Using a sprint-based approach, I developed and iterated a minimum viable prototype in Typeform, ensuring the experience was intuitive and fit for both facilitators and participants.
Over several sprints, we maintained a user story backlog and I regularly refined the prototype based on shared priorities and input from the working group. While I deferred key decisions to the product owner, I was responsible for ensuring the tool’s design aligned with user needs and service context.
Throughout development, I documented design assumptions and outstanding service pathway questions—for example:
Assuming facilitators would be trained in administering the tool
Questioning what kind of follow-up support participants would receive
This approach ensured the AUDIT-C tool was part of a broader, user-informed system, not an isolated digital product.
Key Insight: A Tool Is Not a Service
During the early design sprints, it became clear that the AUDIT C tool could not function effectively in isolation. It needed to be part of a broader service approach—where facilitators were supported in their delivery, and participants knew what actions to take based on their results.
This insight led us to reframe the project as not just a rebuild, but the foundation for a new service pathway. It shaped our user stories, influenced backlog prioritisation, and surfaced questions around training, follow-up care, and data use.
Outcome
The user flows showing requirements from the wider service pathway.
Delivered a fully tested AUDIT C tool ready for deployment once the surrounding service pathway is finalised
Designed a solution that considered the needs of both participants and facilitators through iterative development
Collaborated effectively with stakeholders across the research, design, and testing stages
Positioned the tool within a scalable, future-facing service model, exceeding initial project goals by focusing on real-world context and usability