Pebble

Guiding overwhelmed partners through the pregnancy journey

Over 40% of expecting fathers experience some form of stress over the course of their pregnancy, many of who report feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to best offer help. Yet despite this, the majority of pregnancy resources remained geared towards the pregnant individual, leaving their partners confused and in the dark about the process. How might we make researching pregnancy as a partner engaging instead of overwhelming?

MY ROLE

Lead Designer

THE TEAM

Nadin Tamer, Jessica Yu, Divya Nagaraj (Engineers)

TIMELINE

January - March 2021

The Problem

Pregnant people often wish their partners were more connected to the process, and likewise partners wish they had access to information to carry out their own research and better understand how they can be of support

The Solution

Learn by Week

Pebble

A mobile app designed for partners to easily acquire digestible information, tips, and recommendations customized for them

“Learn more for your growing family!”

Value Proposition

View relevant, curated information in engaging, multimodal format for each current week of pregnancy

Complete Suggested Tasks

Track and customize actionable steps you can do to immediately improve the quality of your pregnancy journey with your partner

Discover and Explore

Explore recommended content based on your profile and find information on specific topics

Diving deep into pregnancy

Some partners would speak for another, or it was clear that people held back — so I adjusted to interview couples both together and individually. I also developed empathy maps and user personas to more accurately tease out the true needs.

Identifying partner needs and dynamics

Common frustrations

To dive deep into the how and why of existing frustrations, I conducted needfinding interviews with 3 partners and 3 couples. Four shared, overarching needs stood out above the rest.

Need for increased transparency and certainty about various aspects of pregnancy

Want for clear steps to improve the quality of their pregnancy journey

Desire for the partner to gain awareness and access to information more independently.

Emotional support and information sharing from other expecting fathers

Certainty

Actionable Steps

Independence

Community

How might we make learning about pregnancy as a partner engaging instead of overwhelming?

Laying the groundwork

Acquiring information independently

Receiving actionables

The first job was to acquire information independently, consistently, and in an engaging manner. From assumption testing, I discovered that TikTok was an effective way for expecting fathers to regularly digest info about pregnancy. I used this as inspiration for my first prototype with each week being a fun card stack of multimodal content to flip through.

With straightforward actionables cited as another core need, I then fleshed out a flow to allow users to view suggested tasks as part of each week’s card stack content, with functionalities to check off, add custom ones, and delete.

Elevating the experience

1. Learn by Week

  1. The card stack made getting to anything specific slow & unintuitive. Tasks had the highest value, yet were buried

  2. I emphasized tasks and used carousels to maximize accessibility to content; however, too much to click on ended up being more overwhelming

I tested my first prototype with 3 expecting fathers, and gained valuable feedback that I used to iterate on each of the core features below

3. The final design sits in the middle of 1 and 2, with content that’s more curated and emphasizes interactive formats

2. Complete Tasks

  1. With the card stack, tasks were inaccessible and had limited functionality

  2. I revised tasks into its own tab, with 1) the current week's tasks and 2) the user's ongoing tasks across all weeks. But users found the setup confusing.

The final design clarified the functionality by using a tooltip to callout and using progressive disclosure

3. Discover and Explore

  1. Users expressed they wanted to see not just what was personalized, but a list of general categories they should explore for more knowledge

  2. The carousels allowed more information to be shown, but during user testing, felt a little overwhelming

3. The final design allows for easy scanning of general topics while also highlighting personalized content

Final Designs

Outcomes

1. Visual design runner up

Out of 50 teams in my HCI Studio class expo, this project won runner up in the visual design category—as determined by Stanford professors and industry judges

2. Developed in React

I collaborated with 3 engineers throughout the 10 week design process in order to bring my prototypes to reality. The result was a fully-functioning React Native mobile app.

Reflection

1. Adapting the design process

I learned how to adapt my process and methods based on real time feedback to most effectively solve the problem. For example, interviewing couples separately after noticing hesitancy to be honest in front of one another

2. Validating assumptions

In my mind, I might have came up with the “perfect” solution i.e the TikTok cards. But it was crucial for me to test my assumptions to ensure I was truly solving the actual problem

3. Working with engineers

Through working with 3 engineers, I grew in articulating my design decisions to people with less design background and finding common ground with people with different priorities