External Advisor Meeting

After presenting my research findings along with some early stage design challenges to the external advisors, I was brought back to my initial reasoning as to why this project was important to me. The direction I was starting to take was an okay direction, but would also involve more research/in-depth interviews that due to time constraints may not be the best use of my time; when in fact I already had some rather deep insights already in place. Spending some time together with some fresh eyes, I was able to reflect and ask myself the five why's and finally decided upon the following direction:

Disconnection

There is a huge disconnection when going through pregnancy/abortion, disconnection from:

• Friends; who are not - mothers/ who have not experienced abortion.
• Directly the partner: This idea of 'Expert Vs. Student' within the relationship.
• Work Identity: Isolated and disconnected from what once was your life.
• Family: Looking at the history of when extended family used to be physically closer and therefore the experts.

Now in Denmark, we are seeing more the fight between genders and sharing of responsibilities : "Hipster dads are now carrying the child across their chests, as what seems like a trophy", and much like Pål stated in my research, there is an apparent imbalance between mother and father as one is the expert and one is the student. There are support groups for everything BUT the struggles experienced through pregnancy and abortion, and the maternal and paternal health issues. You go through education for everything BUT motherhood, apart from the information supplied from the health nurse. Therefore, how can I design a support system beyond just informational that breaks down the perfect vs. non perfect women and motherhood, to connect these different experiences people have to deal with during the journey of pregnancy and before it. All the insights from my interviews concluded that they would love to share the problems with someone in a similar situation to them, and not feel like they have to endlessly search on the internet for answers to questions that are not as relevant. 

Design Challenge

How might we Design a relationship system that connects mothers and fathers in the same situations, not only informational, but human and IN A MEANINGFUL WAY.

Starting with a pilot target group that can be scalable for other aspects along the journey and where the context can be the same but the culture/countries can be different.

Context opportunities

Potential pilot target groups:

• Career orientated first-time mother
• Fathers with anxiety; feeling of disconnection from baby
• Postpartum depression fathers/mothers
• Women who have experienced abortion
• Couples who divorce within 2 years of having a child 

Next steps:

• Map out the research in a visual way, the cross over of relationships 
• Create different scenarios and personas to see potential areas of interest
• Start to prototype interactions to connect the women/men by location/age/workplace
• Look into existing systems that connect huge networks of people