28th June 2017

Dear Design Diary,
On the eve of Esha’s wedding, I took a cab to home. I was accompanied by one of our mutual friends. He’s a brilliant designer, hungry for learning more every day. As the trip advanced, I came to know about the amazing product he has been working on for a while. It was a product for expectant moms. He mentioned that he was looking for a female interviewer who can be more empathetic to ladies than himself. And I volunteered.

This exercise gave me an insight into how difficult it is to be empathetic and what means you can adopt to do better than last time!

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

Interviewing Expectant Moms 👶🏽

“Empathise” is the first stage of the Design Thinking process. Sure, but how?

A lot has been said and written about empathy as the first stage of design thinking process still I find myself returning to the books and theories to check myself if I’m doing it right. Because, just like meditation, you forget to breathe while you started it for the same reason.

And as far as pregnancy is concerned, it is still a very private affair in India. There are lots of myths and beliefs around what to eat what not to, how to sleep and how not to, how much to tell other and so on. Surely the family doesn’t want to take any chances with their child. Sure, people have jumped on the bandwagon of photo shoots, but still, they are reluctant to put it on social media. Not because they are introvert but because it’s about pregnancy and it is very private. It was our hypothesis that ladies would feel more comfortable with a female interviewer than a male interviewer.

We planned our sessions in two parts. As part of the first one, my key role was to make them comfortable and interview with empathy. It was more about learning about their journey, good times, tough times and memorable moments. While in the second part my friend conducted the usability test around specific features and to understand if it made sense to them. if not, hear their ideas out. We also made sure that husbands were part of the interview of a while and later the ladies were on their own.

1. Leave your desk

Empathy in this case involved learning about the difficulties a pregnant woman in India faces, as well as uncovering her latent needs and desires in order to explain her behaviours during this time. To do so, we needed to have an understanding of the expectant’s environment, as well as her roles in and interactions with her environment. So we decided to interview them (4 until now) in their comfort zone — home or office.

Baby posters, parenting books, recliners with lots of cushions, elderly parents of the couple around for help, one can tell that this house is eagerly waiting for their bundle of joy! One can observe that everyone and everything is focussed on the mother and the child.

This was the first step to stepping into their shoes- ‘removing yours’.

2. Let them talk, be a listener

Once we were convinced that the lady is comfortable, we began the interview. Soon it turned into a story telling session with details like how the couple first came to know about the pregnancy. Their initial emotions, how they checked and re checked with the pregnancy test kits one after another before announcing it to the family. One has to be a genuine listener to feel the emotions they felt. It helped to understand the flow points, pressure points and choke points.

She spoke about her troublesome first trimester, smooth second and third. We heard words like ‘trust’, ‘curious’, ‘concern’, ‘caution’, ‘advice’, over and over again for the doctor she visits, the hospital, her friend circle, google searches, ultrasound reports, and almost everything. These key words gave us an insight into her day to day feelings and thoughts.

From midnight cravings to issues she faced in office, from visible bump to first kick everything got registered with me as it was all narrated with expressions sweet and bitter. But, one needs to be vigilant of when to intervene the participant without making her feel interrupted when she wants to tell so much. This keeps one on track with time and helps not getting deviated from the goal.

Know when to intervene without interrupting.

3. Observe the ‘thoughtless acts’

IDEO Executive Design Director Jane Fulton Suri describes something as “thoughtless acts” — small acts people exhibit that reveals how their behaviours are shaped by their environments. The whole design community understands that there is a fair amount of interpretation involved in finding out what people mean rather than what they say. Empathy is the difference between taking what your users say at face value. Still one must remind himself this lesson, throughout conducting the interview. until it becomes our behaviour over time.

Something as simple as minor restless movements on the couch was enough to convey that a participant in her 8th month cannot sit like that for more than 8 minutes at a stretch, although she said she was comfortable. On offering an extra cushion, she jumped for it on the first opportunity. Her discomfort was affecting the usability test which was undesirable by all means.

There we saw a validation of one of the feature — to sell maternity products on the platform , as she went on asking if there are better products like a cushion.

4. Engage

We wanted to understand user’s social circles, of friends, of other pregnant ladies, both physically and digitally. As time passed by, we became more familiar and the lady started to trust us. Why I believe this is because she opened her chat to show me the pictures and memes that she had received in the maternity group. She talked about how they formed a pre natal yoga group in the society which led to this whats app group. This community become really important for all of them to solve their day to day queries about pregnancy.

5. Understand their motivations and thoughts

It was important to know the core motivation of the ladies to come to this platform. Surely, there are many applications available but a USP based on their motivation would clearly give this business an edge over others. All the participants felt that the apps were not fitting the ‘Indian context’, that made the weekly articles their key motivation to come to the app. As these articles were generalised for any woman on earth. They had strong thoughts around missing tips from elderly ladies on home remedies again adding to fact that they were missing ‘Indian context’ on these applications. One of them also said, “How I wish, men should also actually feel what we are feeling.”

All these were nothing but a way for us to identify the crudest of their motivations and make a viable product out of it.

So what happened to the hypothesis?

When the ladies spoke about a feminine issue like medical states, or when they rolled their eyes (remember the thoughtless act?) while discussing expectation mismatch from the husbands, they made eye contact with me. It felt as if they knew I’d understand, though I’m not pregnant. While clearly, they reached out to the male counterpart for addressing usability issues. It was a boon to have two members for this exercise. Our hypothesis was correct.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas. If you want to talk about UX/UI design, or just want to say hello, connect with me via Linkedin.