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Northwestern Medicine

NICU2Home

A hospital sponsored start up had an app that supported parents of babies while they were in the NICU at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago. They wanted to expand their app and business by making it useful to parents not only while their child was in the NICU, but up to two years post-discharge.

The Ask & The Challenge

A hospital sponsored start up had an app that supported parents of babies while they were in the NICU at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago. They wanted to expand their app and business by making it useful to parents not only while their child was in the NICU, but up to two years post-discharge.

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1

Understand the existing app market for maternal and mental health apps and identify the white space opportunity for this product

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Explore leveraging the Northwestern Hospital brand to extend value beyond the hospital to a commercial global audience​

2

Understand the post- NICU needs and goals of parents transitioning home

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Define the feature set that will be both useful and embraced by parents and be a fit for  success in a larger commercial market

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Design, build and test the product leveraging the initial mvp design

Client needed help:
 

  • Understanding the needs and goals of parents once their child was discharged

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  • Coming up with a go to market plan to expand their user base and potential market beyond the NICU at Northwestern Hospital

 

  • Exploring and defining features and functionality that would resonate with users post - discharge

 

  • Understanding the current app market and drive design to ensure competitive success based on their core competencies and brand promise

 

  • Designing the post-discharge version of the app

Project Considerations:
 

  • This was funded by an NIH science grant for a 6 month engagement

 

  • This engagement was entirely remote

 

  • All research required formal protocols be created, submitted and reviewed by hospital IRB

 

  • I had the existing app and design elements to use as a foundation although we tweaked brand

 

  • I did all the strategy, research and design collaborating with team comprised of the Doctor that was the head of the NICU, his business partner, NICU nursing staff and an offshore development team

Market Research

To understand how to position NICU2HOME as an offering and what features and functionality would be most valuable to customers I had to understand the size, breadth and depth of what our there and how the space was trending

What:

Conducted remote moderated interviews with 10 families with varying degrees of experience with newborns

Why: 

To understand their fears, issues and insights transitioning their babies from the NICU to home. Insights drove functional considerations for the app. These same parents were used to validate the design. 

Experience Strategy

  • Design a feature set that fits the needs of our target customer that will also resonate with a wider commercial audience

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  • Add features and functionality useful to NICU parents post - discharge and also have value for parents of term babies

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  • Leverage the Northwestern brand and connection parents feel with the hospital and staff - instill that positive NICU experience virtually via the app

  • Don’t compete with trackers and tools - add only highest value functionality leveraging what is unique in the market

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  • Add features and functionality that have value to both to NICU parents and those with full term babies​

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  • Consider mental health fictuonality in context of infant care - don’t compete directly with popular apps

User Research

What:

  • Conducted remote moderated interviews with 10 NICU families with varying degrees of experience with newborns

Why: 

  • To understand their fears, issues and insights transitioning their babies from the NICU to home

  • Insights drove functional considerations for the app

  • These same parents were used to validate the design 

Research Synthesis

What:

  • Themes generated from insights

  • For each theme, design implications were developed

  • Collaborative sessions were then used to generate feature ideas for the app which were subsequently considered and prioritized from user value, market fit and development LOE perspectives

Why: 

  • To define the feature set of functionality we added to the product that align to the user needs and goals identified in the research. 

Design

Informed by the research insight I designed the post-NICU app experience

Onboarding Flow

Prototype

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