UMA - every pregnant woman's friend
Jul 2021 - Nov 2021
Service Design | Design Research
To design a system-service that caters to the needs of pregnant women in rural India, such that it improves maternal health and the pregnancy experience for the women, their ancillary support system and the doctors.
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For this project, I worked within a team of 12 designers at IBM.
Objective
Skills & Tools Used
User & SME interviews, empathy & stakeholder mapping, affinity mapping, iceberg model, system mapping, customer journey mapping, scenario mapping, causal loop diagrams, service blueprint, rapid prototyping.
Research
User Group
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Women in rural India - aged 18-55 years
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The pregnant woman’s ancillary support system - husband, in-laws, close friends, maiden family.
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Doctors and nurses at local public healthcare centres
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Community healthcare workers - ASHA & anganwaadi workers.
Interviewees hailed from lower socio-economic backgrounds, primarily from rural and peri-urban areas of India. A total of 79 interviews were conducted across 8 states in India.
Research Methods
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One-on-one in-depth user interviews
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Participatory research
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Ecosystem mapping
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Shadowing
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Ethnographic research - fly-on-the-wall
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Quantitative data from desk research (literature reviews of online articles, papers etc.)
Research Goals
Research goals were divided between two major domains -
1. Healthcare
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To understand the quality of maternal care and current medical practices.
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Identify barriers in accessing and utilising maternal healthcare.
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Assess doctor-patient interactions.
2. Socio-economic context
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Understand the tightly interwoven cultural and communal beliefs.
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Evaluate community’s lack of access to information and technology.
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Identify repeating behavioural patterns and systemic beliefs in our user group regarding gender bias, misogyny, adherence to doctors instructions and traditional remedies.
Research Constraints
Due to COVID-19, our team could connect with each other only virtually. Where possible, inperson
interviews were conducted with women and their ecosystem, but many interviews
were conducted virtually.
Important Insights
The team created various maps to help analyse the vast amounts of research conducted.
System map constructed from our primary & secondary research
Created to analyse the user groups' behavioural patterns that feed into each other, and how these patterns came about in the first place.
Derived from primary research, after understanding the healthcare system that surrounds the woman, and the pregnancy journey overall.
System map constructed from our primary & secondary research
Clarity about the ecosystem surrounding the pregnant woman, and the medical journey she goes through during her pregnancy enabled us to identify major pain points - which we could affect - in the woman's journey.
Throughout the research process, the team was committed towards understanding the WHY behind these problems, which informed the following important insights:
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Factors in the complex ecosystem surrounding the pregnant woman feed into each other to create more pain points - for example, the biased notion of pregnancy being a “woman’s job” alienates the father from the pregnancy journey, thereby depriving the mother of a support system etc.
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Many women lose their lives to preventable pregnancy complications that worsen because they do not seek help as soon as they notice something is wrong. This further comes from behaviour patterns that aim to solve medical emergencies with home remedies, that choose to "wait and see if things get worse" before seeking medical help, and that downplay the seriousness of women's health.
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Other insights informed us of additional factors that feed into and exacerbate the above insights:
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There exists a lack of access to accurate medical information.
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There is low medical adherence, which aggravates problems that could be solved with timely intervention.
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Poor patient-doctor communication.
Ideation
Four main needs were identified from the research, which formed the ideation parameters:
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Accessible, accurate and actionable information that is sensitive to the pregnant person's context.
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Healthy attitude towards medical adherence.
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Educating the pregnant person and their ecosystem.
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Facilitated communication with the medical staff.
The team ideated on various ideas, and used the following matrix to assess the ideas based on various factors such as feasibility, level of engagement, learning curve of the users etc.
Final Output
A highly complex ecosystem surrounds pregnant women in rural and peri-urban areas in India, wherein, due to lack of right and timely intervention, many women lose their lives to preventable complications during pregnancy.
UMA is a service that seeks to empower pregnant women and their ancillary support system with the right information regarding their pregnancy, improve medical adherence and help seeking behaviour, and facilitate better patient-doctor communication, so that the pregnant woman can receive timely aid and does not lose her life to preventable complications.
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UMA makes use of the very unassuming house calendar that is present in almost every Indian household, and scales it up into a tool which the woman uses to track her pregnancy and day-to-day symptoms, to gain additional information about it, and to better communicate with the doctor.
A brief summary of the pregnant person's journey through the service.
A detailed view of the pregnant person's journey throughout the service.
A brief summary of the pregnant person's journey through the service.
These are the major touchpoints in the service:
Descriptions of how users interact with the service touchpoints, and how they add value to the service and users' life.
Understanding the placement of the touchpoints within the larger service-system they reside within.
Descriptions of how users interact with the service touchpoints, and how they add value to the service and users' life.
Our mascot - Uma Didi - is a vital vehicle in helping our user group relate to and absorb the information she imparts through short informational videos. Uma Didi is a product of extensive research into the relationship of a pregnant woman with her most trusted aide during her pregnancy - who is usually a close older female relative.
The team strived to translate the persona of this aide into a mascot who pregnant women and their families would be able to identify with and relate to, thereby building trust in the service.
From initial research to final design - the character design process of Uma Didi
From initial research to final design - the character design process of Uma Didi
Uma Didi features in the informational videos which the users can watch by scanning the QR codes on the sticker sheet. Here is an example:
Prototyping &
Testing
Initial protoypes of UMA have been tested with doctors and healthcare workers to positive feedback. Future testing and eventual deployment of the service is underway.
Reception
OCT 2021
Touchpoint – Service Design Network (SDN)
Paper Accepted to be Published
NOV 2021
IxDA 2022 Interaction Awards
Shortlisted in 3 Categories: Connecting, Disrupting, Empowering
NOV 2021
iF Design Award for Social Impact
Finalist
DEC 2021
Design Research Society (DRS 2022)
Paper Accepted to present (Bilbao) and be published
JAN 2022
World Design Organization
Invited to present at the 32nd World Design Assembly Paper abstract accepted