One Mom At a Time
In Mozambique, many mothers live hours from the closest medical facility and often lack the funds to recieve treatment. Because of this volunteer health workers are necessary to try and manage the health concerns of these sometimes very large communities, with such a large scope and so little resources, volunteers often lack the supplies, proper training and simply time to manage it the task. This is where the HealthLink Cooperative comes in to play, as a non-profit organization it is the goal of the HealthLink Cooperative or (HLC) to help make it easier for these volunteer health workers to track a mother’s pregnancy, birth and the baby’s health with a easy to use mobile app.
I was recruited to help lead the UX design aspect of this mobile app, which has lead me to be a strong advocate for this initiative, and for the last several months, the Cooperative hadd been struggling to get the whole team involved in the fundraising efforts. As a possible solution to help encourage participation I thought a digital publication might be the perfect response, it could serve as a tool for team members to use when they talked about the initiative, both at conferences and even with friends and family. They could discuss their role on the team while the publication could be used as a visual aid and interactive element to help engage the listener.
I met with the team leaders to discuss what their main objective might be behind wanting this publicaiton what they hoped to gain from it? Ultimately we concluded that it should be used for fundraising efforts, and providing potential donors with key information that may help sway their decision to help support our cause. So these were the guiding principles in my design thinking process. “What could I do to create an emotional response and connection with the audience?”
I started out by very briefly outlining important phases and dates for the scope of the project.
Phase 1– Ideation & Sketches
2. Phase 2 — Research, Gather Assets
Phase 3– Develop Publication
Phase 4– Testing & Reiterations
Phase 5– Deliver finished products
Sketches
I can remember how many scratches of paper I went through before deciding on a layout that I liked, which I would even end up chanig agian. The important thing to remember was that by getting my ideas out there on paper, I was able to come up with multiple designs and not just sticking with my first which can be tempting when you immediately start building with software.
Research
After discussing what information we deemed most important to include in the publication, (as we wanted to keep the publication quick and to the point.) I started sketching potential flow charts to make sure the information would flow nicely, and that each vertical would be relevant to the last.
Develop Publication
A key concept I kept in mind through out my designs was keeping a consistent look and feel to the design guide already implace at HLC, so I followed the same typeface, color scheme to maintain a consistent feel across mediums.
I added a light grey backdrop behind the text through-out the publication to help break up the white space, create some consistency and create a more seamless experience between the different sections in the verticles.
It’s a funny story how I got the idea for the backdrop, I actually went back to some previous work I had done with the HLC, when they asked me to help design their mobile app’s logo. (Which is how I originally got introduced to the HealthLink Cooperative.) So it was almost poetic how this design should make it’s way into the publication.
Testing and Reiterations
After conducting more user research in Mozambique we found that even with the mobile app, the geographic areas are so large in some regions and the amount of health care providers so few, that in many cases even if the designated health care provider recieved a notice that their patient was going into labor they may not even arrive on site until after the baby is already delivered. Because of this I decided to focus the publication on the aspect of the foundation that was proving extremely successful, the home birthing kits. They were proving to be much more effective and in a higher demand than the mobile app, and for only five dollars a pop, it’s not much to ask for when looking for donations. This would hopefully help our team members in their fundraising, (it helps when you can tell your potential donor exatcly where their money would be spent.)
As I mentioned earlier I wanted to create more interactivity for the end user and help draw a connection between them and the people we would be helping so instead of a boring list of materials, I decided to use pop ups to help create a more immersive experience for the reader, so that they could personally see each piece of material that goes into each home birthing kit, and where their money would be going.
I originally planned on using the pricing chart offered by the HLC, but I wanted to keep my layout consistent with the rest of the publication, however the real determining factor behind changing this goes back to my overall arching goal of creating an emotional response and connection with my audience, I wanted to put a face with the movement, so that when we were asking for help and donations, donors would be able to see exactly who it was they were helping.
Deliverables
To highlight some of the features and visual design I created this quick walk through of the publication below.
Lessons learned
Keeping the end in mind: While any good product always goes through multiple iterations, no one ever gets it right the first try, it is important to establish overarching goals, and principles to stick to. So that even when unexpected circumstances arise (as they always do) you can shift yet still stay on course. By keeping to my established goals and design principles set earlly on in the project, I was able to make well informed decisions and each of my designs had purpose.
