Tommy's

The challenge

According to a survey carried out by leading baby charity Tommy’s, 67% of women plan for three or more months for a holiday, while just 20% plan for three or more months for a pregnancy. 

This startling fact, and other research into women’s health and pregnancy, led Tommy’s to approach Fat Beehive to create a digital pre-pregnancy tool to help  women make sense of the factors that affect their chances of having a safe and healthy pregnancy.

The brief

Pregnancy can be affected by over a dozen distinct factors, including whether a woman smokes and drinks, takes folic acid, has an existing physical condition or lives with a mental health condition. Tommy’s was producing a wealth of new content on these topics for their website but needed a tool that would engage and educate women hoping to get pregnant.

Our approach

We carried out initial user research to understand what information would be helpful to users during pre-conception, as well as to understand any shortfalls in existing tools. 

During development, we ran moderated user testing to make sure that the steps were helpful and made sense, and that the user journeys were supportive and positive. This included feedback on the kind of language used, to make sure that users didn’t feel targeted or judged for their answers. We also tested users’ reactions to other subtle elements of the app, such as fonts, icons and the size of different buttons. We created different versions of the visual direction for displaying the tailored results and ran A/B testing to understand what users preferred and why.

Our solution

Based on our research, we proposed a mobile-first, quiz-based mechanic that assesses a woman’s preparedness for pregnancy and offers tailored advice. Twenty questions, mostly multiple choice, are presented one at a time, and are  designed to be answered quickly and easily on-the-go.

The ease and simplicity of the interface masks some truly complex mathematics under the bonnet that scores each answer, considers their conditions and dependencies, and weights their impact on a woman’s pregnancy. We devised an algorithm that was stress tested and approved by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Public Health England and the UCL Institute for Women’s Health, who all stand behind each result. 

Importantly, the results are broken down into each of the factors with advice on how to improve them. The advice is personalised and relevant for each woman, depending on their answers, and includes links to further reading, as well as the option to sign up for ongoing regular advice via email.