UMA
Every expecting mother's friend
UMA is a pregnancy service that considers the socio-demographic context of the various pregnancy stakeholders and engages with them via organic and accessible touchpoints. For the pregnant woman and her support system, the service leverages household resources, and practices to inculcate medical adherence, proactive decision-making, and build help-seeking behaviours. For the medical personnel, UMA lessens the burden of care and smoothens the doctor-patient interactions for increased productivity.
Collaborators
IBM: Design Director, Multi-disciplinary Designers, AI Experts, Engineers
Methods
Field Research, System Map, User Research, Design Thinking, Service Design
Tools
Miro, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Suite, Figma
Duration
12 weeks
UMA Accomplished!
iXDA 2022 Interaction Awards
World Design Organization
Presented at the 32nd Assembly
Process
Discover - Devise - Deliver
SME Interviews
Doctors and Community Healthcare Workers
Used system maps, shadowing and in-depth interviews to deconstruct the involvement of pregnancy stakeholders and factors that influence their decision-making.
User and Ancillary System Interaction
Pregnant Women, their Husbands and Parents
Causal layered analysis of the maternal landscape was done to examine its social, medical and cultural paradigms, delving into dynamics of sexism. Conducted interviews with all stakeholders from rural & urban areas.
Remote & Cross-Collaboration
To converge our research and unpack user mental models, we conducted persona mapping, conversational analysis, workshops/ideation sessions. As we alternated between converge-diverge modes of work, we had daily stand-ups and playbacks to fuel our collaboration.
Current
Scenario
Confused by the onslaught of differing advice
Inert at following medical recommendations
Burdened by family's needs and expectations
Struggles at prenatal appointments
A highly complex ecosystem surrounds pregnant women in rural/peri-urban areas in India, wherein, due to lack of right and timely intervention, many women lose their lives to preventable complications during pregnancy.
Approach
Health Assistant
Regional Calendar
Tool of Communication
Calendars in India are as diverse as its people; language, advertisements, holidays and stories changing with the locale. Families typically use them to track festivals, holy days and lunar & solar cycles. They also make notes for groceries, payments, etc.
Sticker Sheet
Trimester-wise Tracking
Stickers mark trimester-specific pregnancy elements and warning signs. Doctors can scan the stickers to get access to authentic information and advice from UMA. The size of the stickers allows the OCR to conduct an error-free reading.
UMA
Mobile App
Scannable stickers provide vital information through the UMA app.
Users receive trimester-specific sticker sheets from their local healthcare centre to pin onto their home calendars, and track their pregnancy.
Doctor leverages Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and ML to gather insights based on the stickers, at the subsequent hospital visits.
Doctor use the UMA app with a marker-based system to get an idea of the medical adherence, warning signs potential complications, etc.
Usage
To-Be
Scenario
Introduced to UMA at the PHC during the wait
Diligently uses her trimester-specific stickers to track pregnancy symptoms
Informs herself on the different aspects of her pregnancy at her own pace
More comfortable now at her doctor visits
Process of Scanning
Doctors download the UMA app to help them assist and consult their patients better
The application has two main functions
Maintain Patient Records
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The app provides features to create and update patient records.
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On every pregnant woman’s first visit, a profile is created for her,
and insights from her appointments are saved to her profile. -
This helps in data management, and also helps doctors and
nurse track a patient’s progress over a period of time.
Scanning and Insights
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The doctor scans the patient’s calendar from the app.
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The app makes use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to pick up on the 'markers' i.e. the illustrations on the stickers. The sticker illustrations are important here, as the uniformity and legibility of each individual sticker design is optimal for the OCR to read and identify what each sticker stands for.
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Machine Learning at the development end of the app enables the algorithm to identify the presence, meaning behind and frequency of the stickers, as well as their position in relation to each other, to generate insights.
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These insights would inform the doctor the occurrence and frequency of certain symptoms, and any correlation between them. It helps the doctor to know at a glance how the patient’s month(s) has been so they can recommend next steps immediately. It also spares them the time of having to go through the calendar and decipher meaning from the stickers themselves.
Information Channels
At the commencement of this project, the aim was to positively impact maternal healthcare. In our attempt to stimulate behavioral change, we identified the latent emotions of the pregnancy stakeholders and used those as the basis for our design decisions.
She is a source of authentic, local information and a trusted confidante for pregnant women.
Our Mascot: UMA
Informative Videos
Trimester-specific short videos that cover topics from warning signs, nutrition, hygiene, to the baby’s development and precautions.
In-Clinic Videos
Through this point of intervention, the long wait at the healthcare centers are made more productive. The woman and other stakeholders are made aware of the sticker sheet and other pregnancy related information, while they wait for their turns.
UMA-Driven Outcomes
Increased agency of the pregnant woman by diligent marking of symptoms and signs
Increased stakeholder activity through digital media and informative videos
Increased productivity at ANC appointments due to the in-clinic videos played on loop
