Give Back Hack Columbus: DigiDoula App

DigiDoula App helps connect mothers with local resources to help improve their mental health.

Give Back Hack Columbus is a yearly week-long event that brings together tech and startup community in order to impact social change. At this event, ideas are put through a weekend of organizing, assessing, and presenting to establish a better vision for the idea’s relevance to the community. Give Back Hack is the launchpad for social innovation. Teams have just under 6 days to test the idea, create an MVP and come up with a strong ask.

Marie McCausland, a postpartum doula, has come up with an idea of an app that would help connect mothers with postpartum care professionals, all while educating and supporting them through the transition into parenting.

Initial 1 minute long pitches took place on Zoom Friday evening. Each presenter had 15 minutes divided into 3 rounds to tell people more about their idea and recruit them into their team. Once the teams had been formed, the thinking started. We met again Saturday morning for a Design Thinking presentation and some advice.

Miro board: jot down proposed features, customer groups, goals that the app is thought to solve.

First sketches, and more thinking.

Thought process on how to best organize the feed

We have started to see gaps of information and identify areas where we need to have more clarity.

A survey has been created and sent out to everyone we knew.

A list of questions for the in-depth interview has been put together by members of the team.

We started reaching out to mothers and doulas to identify their pain points and needs. We had to pinpoint the need in order to identify the most important problem to tackle.

We have also had sessions with mentors to help us zero down on a problem and identify the best solution.

More sketches have been made.

More ideas on the design of the feed. At this point we still have the Babytracker feature. Later we will decide to drop it and focus on the main task of connecting mothers to postpartum care.

We are deciding on the features we should focus on first. We come up with 3 sections:

Meanwhile, the results of our survey and interviews have started to trickle in. The majority of women said that they were not prepared to the life with the baby. They had basic information about how to care for the baby, but didn’t know how to care for themselves in a new role. Here is how one of the respondents answered the question, “How did you feel when you came home from the hospital?”

“Awful! I felt lost on “what to do next” after leaving the hospital, and I felt like my feelings were not validated. I wish someone would have checked in on my mental health.”

90% of the respondents were not aware of postpartum doulas, and couldn’t say what they do.

First prototype created

First prototype has been created. Since there was limited time, and we had to pitch our idea in a few days, I created a higher fidelity prototype to better showcase the app. I focused on 3 areas we wanted the app to help: Educate, Connect & Support.

I have created 2 other screens: for the free local resources and for the doulas directory. I still wasn’t 100% sure how these sections of the app should be called, or what exactly is going to be in them. Daily brainstorming sessions on Zoom & feedback from research helped us come up with different ideas, and start testing them with the users.

User frustrations identified after testing the prototype:

• What is a postpartum doula?
• You are talking about postpartum depression, what does a doula have to do with it? Why aren’t you referring to mental health professionals?
• The sections “Support” and “Find a doula” aren’t very clear. My idea was to have one section dedicated to local free resources and one – postpartum care providers’ directory. But it hasn’t been clear from the app.

As a result of this feedback I decided to make the following changes to the prototype:

Change the names of the sections to “Local Support” and “Find a Provider”.

I have added more content into the “Learn” section, so it would be clear for the testing user, that this content is going to be in support of the woman during postpartum, and it will not be limited only to postpartum depression. I have also added a TikTok video showing that the feed will not only be educational, but fun.

I have added content into the “Local Support” section to further set it up as a free local resources library.

In the “Find a Provider” section I have added keywords to filter for a provider you need. I have also highlighted a link to the article about “What is Portpartum Doula?” So once the keyword is selected, a user has an opportunity to read about how doula can help her, as well as click through to apply for financial help to pay for doula’s services.

By the end of the 4th day the final prototype was ready.

View prototype

Working on a pitch deck, refining the problem our app will solve. Identifying the features that need to be build first, and the ones that we should vet after. Talking through the main pain points of the users. Sharing the test pitch with mentors and gathering feedback. Refining our ask.

Final pitch should be recorded and submitted by the end of the day. Our team focused on making changes based on the mentor’s feedback. We have redefined our mission to be focused on improving mothers’ mental health, with specific focus on Black mothers and women with the history of depression.

Learn more about Give Back Hack Columbus

If you are interested in learning more about my experience, or if you have a collaboration in mind, drop me a line!

camomint@gmail.com

(614) 495-6244