(06)Juneau Premera Blue Cross

A community for dads.

Over the course of 10 weeks, we explored ways to support caregivers who are part of a health care network. In particular, we focused on fathers that are supporting their partners and newborns during the post-partum experience.

Two Juneau phone screens: onboarding that reads 'Juneau is an app bringing community to new dads' and the Community tab with a two-month milestone card

(team): Angela Yung, Eleanor Nesbit, Tyler La
(role): Usability testing, visual design, low-hi fidelity wireframes, prototyping, user research, secondary research
(sponsor): Premera Blue Cross Healthcare
(timeline): 10 weeks

(the challenge)

How might we empower new and expectant dads to improve the postpartum experience for new parents?

Juneau is an app that allows both new and expectant fathers to ask questions and share their advice.

Juneau discussion threads, including a Juneau's Pick post on postpartum depression and a partner support question

ForumThe forum allows for users to search trending topics that are specific to their baby's age. Users can ask a question to start a new discussion.

The Seattle Dads group page with a newsfeed post asking for playground recommendations

GroupsThe groups tab allow users to enhance their sense of community within the app by joining or creating groups based on their personal interests.

Alerts screen showing private messages from other dads

CustomizeFeatures such as anonymous mode and private messages allow for a customized experience that can be tailored to each user's comfort level.

research insights

Secondary research

We were given the task of designing for caregivers during the after care experience, an area that is often overlooked in the healthcare field. With so many possibilities, we began conducting our secondary research to better understand the needs.

During our literature review we found that childbirth was the single most common reason for hospitalization in the US. As a result, we wanted to further explore what we could do to help new mothers navigate the postpartum experience. From our research we gained a few key insights that drove our ideation process:

01The postpartum experience affects new parents both mentally and physically

02The birth of a child has negative effects on relationships

03The most common problems experienced by mothers postpartum are pain, exhaustion, sleep deprivation and stress

Cultural probe

In order to better understand the needs of new mothers, we headed to our local community center to recruit mothers and their caregivers for primary research. We provided them with cultural probes as a means of guiding them in expressing their thoughts and sharing their experiences. We gained the following insights:

Mothers expressed wanting more sleep, support, and to be able to have a social life/aspirations
Fathers were worried about finances and providing for their families
Fathers wanted to be able to better support their partners.

Interview

We also conducted five semi-structured interviews with new moms and their caregivers and found the following key insights:

Friends with kids were an important resource that new parents leaned on especially when they did not live close to their family
There were some parts of motherhood that spouses were not able to help with such as breastfeeding, which was a source of exhaustion in new moms
Parenting classes were not adequate in portraying the reality of parenthood and therefore were not as effective as parents would have liked them to be

ideation

Concept generation

With our new insights, we generated a mind map to better visualize our problem space through a holistic lens. The insights gathered from our mind map guided our first round of ideation, resulting in 90 concepts.

A wall of hand-sketched concept cards grouped under sticky-note categories like self-care tools, wearables and AI assistant

Down selection

We used a card sorting exercise to organize our thoughts and group our concepts into categories. We met with Premera's design team to discuss feedback and Premera's business goals. We learned that getting people the right information at the right time was paramount. Our critique session with Premera guided our downselection to 20 concepts.

The team reviewing concept sketches and an insights poster on the wall

Final concepts

In our next phase of down selection, we used the de Bono six thinking hats method and decision matricies to land on our final 3 concepts: a VR parenting simulation to prepare new parents through a more realistic lens, a baby advice app that allows new parents to connect, and a task manager to help new moms stay organized with their support network.

prototyping

Wireframes

Given the scope of the project and main insights we wanted to address, we decided to move forward with designing a combination of the baby advice app and the task manager.

User testing

We started with a paper prototype and set out to conduct usability testing on a sample of new dads. Immediately we found that we had not quite succeeded in our goal. Most users did not know where to find information within our app and just did not see the value in having so many features.

Testing paper prototypes with a dad holding his baby at a playground

We decided to take a step back and consider the feedback that we had received from our users. We realized the problem wasn't so much about needing to stay organized. Instead, dads need a place to ask questions and learn about resources on how to be a better dad/partner. They need to feel heard in a space that was tailored to them. After conducting a competitive analysis, we came to find that while such resources for moms were over-saturated, no such resources existed for new dads.

“…my husband and I were really put off by all these ‘mom branded’ websites and won’t read them.”

— dad of 8 month old

design

Information architecture

Juneau makes sure dads are not forgotten in the postpartum experience. It allows dads a safe space to ask for help whether it is for them, their spouse or their newborn. For a complete view of Juneau's information architecture, we created a site map.

Juneau site map: Community (Explore, For You, Groups), Favorites, Create, Notifications and Account

Flows

(onboarding)

(create a discussion)

(explore)

impact

Reflection

Juneau had a positive impact when we presented to our stakeholders at Premera. In particular they liked that we found a need in a forgotten user base to design for and appreciated the thorough research we conducted to inform our iterative design process. The response that really stuck with me was from the head of PR who attended our presentation and expressed that this app concept would be a great addition from a PR standpoint.

(next project)

Market Insights