National Childbirth Trust’s Infant Feeding Line (IFL) isn’t reaching nearly as many parents as it could, and isn’t built for today’s parents who expect more than just a voice down a phone.
NCT’s Infant Feeding Line service has been running for 21 years and is built on an old, ‘creaky’ phone system. Ever since the pandemic, there has been a significant uplift in calls showing a real need for the service and it’s not just about infant feeding advice, it provides vital emotional support to new parents and has a huge impact. But the service isn’t reaching nearly as many parents as it could, and isn’t built for today’s parents who expect more than just a voice down a phone.
-
![[image|myimage|#]](https://www.abhipsharay.com/s/IFL.png)
-
The National Childbirth Trust is the UK's largest charity offering information and support in pregnancy, childbirth and early parenthood Since 1956 it has supported millions of parents through birth of their children and through early parenthood while bringing about advances in professional practice and public policy.
Our objective was to redesign the service model, whilst exploring new ways to sustainably fund this going forward.
NCT had an ambition to reach every parent, no matter their location, culture, sexuality and socioeconomic status, with a service that would support them through those difficult moments of early parenthood.
RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS
We conducted 8+ in-depth interviews with parents from various socio-economic backgrounds to understand the audience NCT currently caters to as well as exploring new avenues with audiences that have not availed NCT’s information and services.
DEVELOPING USER PERSONA
Using data collected throughout the project, we put together a set of 4 illustrated personas to represent some of our key users’ needs, goals, and state of mind. I read the book Design for Real Life during this project and was struck by the importance of taking into account the ‘stress case’ (or worst case scenario) that users may encounter. This is especially important in healthcare. One such persona that NCT particularly wanted to target was Anika (refer to image)
New parents need an inclusive support service that empowers new parents by providing personalised guidance, resources, and expert advice for navigating the early stages of parenthood.
By implementing tailored communication channels and triaging mechanism, we can deliver targeted information that can help new parents in high stress situations and improve the quality of care they provide to their infant.
Raising Infant Line is redesigned flagship service to help new parents from diverse multi-cultural background receive infant care support for the first 1000 days.
Raising infant line includes booking capabilities, cultural competence and multi-language capabilities to improve the service provided to new parents.
We recommended three essential elements to improve engagement with the service.
Booking Capabilties
The service aims to improve the booking capability, making it easier and more accessible for parents to schedule and access the support services.
Cultural competence
The service includes enhancements to ensure cultural competence, providing tailored support that respects and addresses the unique cultural backgrounds of parents.
Multi-language capabilities
The service will be expanded to include multiple-language capabilities, enabling effective communication and support for parents with limited English proficiency..
IMPROVED JOURNEY MAPPING
SERVICE BLUEPRINT
PROTOTYPING WITH PARENTS
KEY FINDINGS
We conducted various ideation exercises such as Storyboarding, and SCAMPER (to name a few) within the team and with NCT leaders.
We designed low-fidelity prototypes of our service propositions and quickly tested them with the parents, to gain insights on the success and failures of each. Our partnership with NCT allowed us to prototype and refine our direction, by receiving real-time feedback from our target audience.
The ‘Raising infant line’ and ‘Infant care line’ had the highest engagement rates but the former tested better in both lower and higher socio-economic groups.
We tested different channels around levels of individual agency to find out what drove most interest.
Testing showed a similar level of interest in both call now and message now, proving the need for both.
NCT’s flagship service was received well as a gateway to other paid services, but some are more appealing than others so this needs to be piloted.
What are clients thought about our approach…
We’ve uncovered a new flagship service which significantly widens the reach of NCT by serving the parents with the most acute needs, and could help to reposition the brand in the minds of parents, health care professionals and commissioners.
The Service Blueprint, delivery plans, accompanying insight and testing evidence is now being translated into plans to turn this newly imagined service into a reality.
"I am really excited about the blueprint that Good Innovation co-created alongside us and with parents, they kept us focused and motivated and the result is ambitious and bold and most importantly would enable us to reach and support many more parents."
- Helen Lloyd - Head of Programmes
Duration
October 2022 - Dec 2022
My Role:
Qualitative Research
Quantitative Research
Workshop facilitation
Stakeholder management
Story Boarding
Prototyping
Service blueprinting
Team:
Good Innovation Ltd.
Abhipsha Ray
Nish Agarwal
Thea Dexter
Design Tools:
Mural
Figma
Adobe Creative suite
Powerpoint presentation
Zoom/ Lookback