An application for young mothers
offering everything a mother needs
in the baby’s first few years of life,
so that she can be calm and confident when raising her baby.
Problem
Many young mothers feel
a lack of confidencewhile raising their baby
This is because they don’t know what to do in every situation.
This lack of knowledge causes a lot of angst during those first years of childraising.
I would like to solve
that young mother’s feeling of frustration
which stems from a lack of readily available information
at any time or in any situation she may find herself in.
Objective
My objective is to create
a product that will accompany the mother
and infuse her with confidence:
It should contain everything a young mother needs to be calm and sure of herself.
Commercial Objective
An option to integrate advertising at a later point
After the app amasses a regular circle of users there will be an option
to insert advertisements for products relating to raising babies - diapers, formula etc.
Research
I set out to study -
What is the reason for the frustration felt
by young mothers?
I checked what the most painful point is for mothers,
as well as thier habits, and how they behave when raising
their babies.
I surveyed 130 mothers.
0
%
Of young mothers felt frustration
while caring for their babies
0
%
Feel that they lack knowledge
on basic subjects
This is the crux of the issue.
It is very hard for a person to feel
that they lack knowledge on a basic subject.
Mothers expect to know basic information
and when they lack that information,
their frustration mounts.
0
%
Ask someone close
for questions and advice
Women rely on someone close,
who aside for giving advice – will reassure them
and support them when necessary.
0
%
Forget important things while
raising their baby.
0
%
Remind themselves using
digital means.
A few important points I heard during my surveys:
I like using a weekly calendar, not a monthly one,
so that I’m less pressured by all I have to do.
I feel like a week at a time is something I can handle.
I hate looking for information relating to my baby on Google.
Every little thing turns into something rare and dangerous,
and I panic for no reason.
If I need information that is urgent
it’s hard for me to sit and read long-winded posts –
I need clear, concise, reliable information
that I can read when I need it.
User Journey:
In order to better understand what a young mother
experiences, I prepared a user journey:
Dos and Don’ts -Based on the Competition
I learned from other apps in similar fields:
I checked what competing apps have – and what their weak points are –
to use as a basis for improvement.
Most apps on the market focus on tracking development.
Some focus on tracking feeding and diapering.
But none of the apps include everything together
and there is no app that provides access to information for the mother.
My research showed that there are
3 things important to the mother:
Easily accessible and concise information
The development process with an explanation of each stage
Alerts for important things that they didn’t even know
were necessary - such as vaccines at certain ages, etc.
Information
Clear and concise information about any subject a mother may encounter
The first screen in the app
is the information category.
Because this is the category that the user enters first
and wants immediate answers about.
The user will enter the development category, let’s say,
when she has more time and availability.
But she enters the information category
when she needs information immediately
in order to know how to act in the situation she is in.
Available, accessible,
concise information
The information is divided into subcategories
and inside each one of them
there are clear, concise tabs
with headings to guide the user
directly to the information she is looking for.
Alerts:
There is an option to receive preprogrammed alerts, synchronized with the baby’s age,
so that even a mother who doesn’t know that her baby needs a shot at age one month
will get an alert with an option to read more about the subject of the alert.
The default setting
is a weekly calendar to give
the mother a sense of calm
I have reached the conclusion that women feel calmer and more confident
when it is a weekly calendar, and they feel that they can handle all the tasks.
That is in contrast to a monthly calendar, which can make them
feel overwhelmed and pressured.
Development:
Details the stages of the baby’s development,
accompanied by explanations for each stage, and an option to read
at length about each one.
Not every baby does
everything on time
Development stages are not limited by months.
There is no specific month when a baby should crawl, for example;
rather it is a range of time during which he should be doing this.
In order not to generate pressure on the mothers
the development stages are not classified by specific months.
Option to read and view
more about the subject:
There is an option to read more about each stage of development,
and to watch tutorials about how to help the baby progress.
This way, even if the baby has not reached a certain progress point,
the mother is not left hanging.
She can do something about it, she can read and watch,
and then be calmer and more confident.
Reflection
This is my first project on designing a product, and I have learned so much from the process.
I learned to analyze the user journey,
how important it is to stick to the research during the design stage as well,
and that every element and design decision needs to have a good reason that is based on research.
