030_gefährdete_gruppen_Growing Life Portal

"Growing Life" enables virtual support before and after giving birth in a trusted environment

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Inspiration

We all have friends in our environment who are expecting a child or have just given birth - and their situation is changing significantly due to Corona. Since COVID-19 restricts the analogue infrastructure, we are inspired by the idea of ensuring the safety and joy of those parents by digital support. Virtual solutions are still not common and very fragmented while parents would like to feel safe and to exchange experiences and worries also in times of social distancing. On the other hand people with expertise and willingness to help lack a platform to provide their help. So we started to explore existing and new challenges (due to Corona) and to ideate on solutions. We also see the opportunity to start building a blended support by virtual and analog services when it comes to preparing and having a child.

What it does

  • Arranging virtual meetings with certified midwives, professionals, volunteers and other community members #VirtualCoffeeTable.
  • Referring to reliable, up-to-date information on COVID-19 and its impact during and after pregnancy as known today.
  • Providing a forum to share questions, concerns and experiences.
  • Outlining a comprehensive overview on existing virtual services structured by the journey of being pregnant to giving birth and beyond.

How we built it

  • Ideation by brainstorming and canvas.
  • Market research, persona description and verification by interviews
  • Reframing of problem statement and solution approach
  • Programming of webpage and content development
  • Storylining and recording of pitch video
  • Using agile methodology (e.g., Kanban and sprints) to quickly generate outcomes and iterate
  • Using collaborative tools (Slack, Mural, Zoom, MS Teams, etc.).

Challenges we ran into

  • Only few team members knew the topic well
  • Only few team members with technical development/coding skills
  • Reframing based on outcomes of market and persona insight
  • Developing a shared vision of the results
  • International team meeting virtual as seven "strangers" and a "normal life" incl. child care to manage in parallel
  • A lot of new tool to get familiar with and leverage

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Building ONE TEAM
  • Proven flexibility to draft, test, adjust and iterate again
  • Well-shaped value proposition and viable platform in a draft state

What we learned

  • A lot of fragmented virtual solutions and a lack of integration
  • Improved skills aligning in the team to build a shared vision
  • We all #WirvsVirusHack are amazing

What's next for Growing Life?

As soon as possible

  • Fill platform with researched content and add english version
  • Integrate midwives with help of the "Deutscher Hebammenverband"
  • Spread the word to bring volunteers on the platform for a go-live in April 2020

After COVID-19

  • Using the platform as a starting point to build-up a complementary blended telemedicine in the care during and after pregnancy

Note The webpage is designed via webflow and exporting the code is associated with a fee. Hence, no code on GitHub is linked

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