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Creating inclusive digital resources for pregnant individuals to connect with maternal health workers
KINCHIN

Challenge
My Role
1. HMW Improve maternal healthcare access and outcomes for First Time Pregnant Individuals?
2. HMW Help Birth workers outside of the mainstream health model better connect with underserved communities?
Co-Founder & CPO, Lead UX Designer &
Lead UX Researcher
Year
Timeline
Tools
2020
6 months
Figma, Miro, Adobe Suite & Gsuite
Outcomes
1
MVP Launched
Members added to the design team in my time leading
Pitch competitions won by the team
5
2
>83%
Positive reviews from user testing
Welcome to KINCHIN


View & Comment on Posts
On our forum, users are able to read through threads of conversations and post comments themselves to start new discussions.

Post a Question on the Forum
Pregnant individuals can ask questions to the healthcare community and have their queries answered by our
certified providers of their choice.

Filtration Tool
In order to find the best birth worker match, users are prompted to enter more specific information through a filtration tool that asks for a users religion preference, queer friendly preference, ethnic preference, etc.

View a Birth Workers Profile
We designed comprehensive profiles for
birth workers within our community, to
help pregnant individuals get an inside
look into their services to make more informed decisions when picking a provider.

01
Understand
Context
In the summer of 2021, I decided to take part in a startup Accelerator bootcamp (ORIGIN) hosted by Cornell University. Alongside 2 other students, I had the opportunity to kickstart a maternal health care focused start up called KNCHIN. After placing as runner ups in the final pitch competition, we decided to continue working on our venture in hopes to bring our vision to fruition.
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KINCHIN is an inclusive online platform for pregnant people to easily connect with qualified maternal care birth workers like doulas, midwives, and lactation consultants.
Problem Definition

There is currently a high racial and ethnic disparity in relation to maternal health care and resources that are served to women of color in the US, especially those who hail from Black and Brown communities.
94% of maternal deaths happen in low-resource settings.
More than 700 women die of pregnancy related complications each year in the US




Discovery
I first conducted a comprehensive research study, which consisted of 5 primary methods: Competitive Analysis, Surveys, 1:1 Interviews, Focus Groups and Virtual Field studies.
My goals were to identify the current challenges that exist in the reproductive healthcare industry, define the needs and support gaps for pregnant individuals/new parents and define the needs of our birth workers.
These were the key insights that we collected for both sides:

Highlights
Pregnant Individuals
Pregnant individuals are confused by the varying amounts of information online
There are not many resources targeted specifically for the Pregnant Individuals health, specifically their mental health.
Over 60% were looking for support groups on different topics and stages of pregnancies.
47% indicated they would use some form of internet search first before even consulting their provider or support system.
They want to know they are receiving verified and trustworthy information about their own health.
87% indicated interest in having the ability to ask birth workers questions through an online forum
Birth Workers
There are currently no platforms on the market that are truly inclusive (i.e ethnicity, LGBTQ+ identities, birth care decisions, etc).
Client management tools for birth workers can be improved for efficiency and be more tailored to the birth workers’ needs.
New and less experienced birth workers need help with marketing, sourcing, and managing clients.
73% expressed that they currently struggle to find the clients who "need them the most"
Creating a strong community is a vital part for both new and experienced doulas
Uncertified birth workers are perceived to not have the same level of credibility and expertise among health professionals.
02
Gain Confidence
Ideate + Iterate
Using a feature prioritization matrix, I then held a brainstorming session with my co-founders and engineer to decide what features we should move forward with that sought to answer our users needs and were technically feasible to build for our MVP.
We decided to begin designing:
A directory of birth workers with personalized profiles
A forum for pregnant individuals to get their questions answered by certified birth workers

Design Goals
Pregnant individuals side:
Focus on creating a platform that they could trust -> implementing a comprehensive vetting system for birth workers.
Ensuring their privacy was respected at all times -> providing an option to remain anonymous when utilizing our platform.
A consolidated way to search for queries, so that they don't continue to be exposed to confusing, contradicting information online.
Birth workers side:
Focus on creating more awareness around the services that birth workers provide
Give birth workers an opportunity to build credibility within our platform -> answering queries asked by pregnant individuals.
Visual Design
As we began thinking about the overall look of our product, we first sat down as a team to begin workshopping what we wanted our brand identity to convey. We wanted to target a more energetic, and young personality, catering to a new, inclusive generation of pregnant people; Differentiate from traditional maternity apps through a more empowering attitude.




Structure: IA & User Flows
We listed out all the tasks we wanted our users to be able to accomplish on our platform on a mind map, developed a information architecture and key user flows.This way, my engineer and I could be on the same page about site structure.
Mind Map

Information Architecture

User Flows


03
Polish
Iterations after testing



Evaluation
To evaluate this final prototype, we conducted a remote un-moderated task-based usability study with 25 participants spanning across birth workers of different roles and pregnant individuals at different stages. This was followed by a qualitatitve survey that asked participants to describe their thought process while performing the tasks.
We gathered a mostly positive response to the prototype. Participants were able to perform the benchmark tasks with ease, and the survey allowed us to obtain qualitative data about user's thoughts while using the app. Here are a few highlights from the results:


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