Pregnancy Care+
Approaches
Starting with the extreme persona
To ensure PregnancyCare+ effectively addressed the needs of expectant mothers at risk of gestational diabetes, we created detailed personas based on clinical research, existing documentation, and qualitative interviews.
I collaborated with behavioral scientists to refine these into two main personas. These personas guided the management and strategic team in focusing the MVP on the profile that would create the greatest impact.
We believed that if we could help high-risk obese expectant mothers (like "Susie") stay healthy, we could also assist the less risky group effectively.
The Solution
We used the customer journey as a tool to understand the pregnancy experience of high-risk expectant mothers. This journey mapped out their physical and emotional changes across the four trimesters, highlighting how these changes could affect their ability to stay active and eat healthily.
The journey identified:
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When they are likely to struggle with self-care.
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Key moments based on clinical studies to prevent gestational diabetes.
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The support roles of healthcare professionals and influencers like partners, mothers, and friends.
The customer journey helped us pinpoint crucial moments for support and understand the context of their experiences.
Leveraging at the key moment that matters
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In the fast-paced venture environment, I guided sessions with management, design, science, and development teams to develop strategic roadmaps. I facilitated the entire team in co-creating a clear roadmap through speculative design. By envisioning the North Star together, we worked backward to identify key assumptions to prove and necessary resources, ensuring our solution addressed both functionality and user experience.
This collaborative effort ensured everyone shared a common vision and prioritized key assumptions in each experiment to achieve the desired future.
Collaborative Roadmapping Through Speculative Design
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I transform key assumptions into precise research questions and ensure that all experimental designs have the right brief to test essential features. Using user insights and the COM-B framework, Care+ designs in-app features that are rigorously tested through agile methods and lean experiments. The program modules were developed iteratively, incorporating feedback from pregnant women through multiple testing phases before the official market launch.
Testing & Iterating with Susie
Project background
PregnancyCare+ is a solution designed to help expectant mothers stay healthy and reduce the risk of gestational diabetes. Developed as a unique initiative within Philips' Women's Health Venture, it stands out in the field.
As a service designer, I played a pivotal role in both strategy and implementation. I led the North Star facilitation, shaping the project's vision and direction. Additionally, I collaborated closely with the product owner to identify and test key assumptions before the soft launch. I also partnered with a behavioral change scientist and UX designer to integrate behavioral change theories into the app's features.
This was an 8-month project I was passionate about. We pivoted the app's features and functionality based on consumer feedback, learning tremendously from the expectant mothers we engaged with. Our experiments showed a high engagement rate, indicating that our target users are following the customized self-care program.
PregnancyCare+ is now being developed as a feature in Pregnancy+, one of the most widely downloaded pregnancy apps worldwide.
My roles
- Facilitate team co-creation sessions to prioritize key target users using persona mapping. - Develop an "as-is" pregnancy journey map to identify key moments where PregnancyCare+ can add value and address consumer challenges. - Collaborate closely with behavioral change scientists to integrate behavioral change theories into app features and interactions. - Formulate hypotheses, key research questions, and methodologies to test solutions with consumers. Create wireframes and collaborate with UX designers to develop UI prototypes. - Lead North Star sessions with the venture lead, product owner, design team, and software developers to define the Care+ vision and create a roadmap.
Time
Nov 2022 - July 2023
Team
Venture lead, Product owner, Software developer, Behavioural change scientist, Service designer, UX/UI Designer, Design researcher
End user & Market
First-time pregnant women in the US who are overweight or obese
Challenges
"How can we support pregnant women in achieving a healthy pregnancy despite self-doubt, societal pressures, and the challenges of hormonal and bodily changes, to reduce the risk of developing gestational diabetes?"
