OVERVIEW
My dear friend Rebecca Naul and I share a passion for women's issues. We also share a background in product design, so when we came across the Lady Problems Hackathon challenge in Santa Monica, we jumped at the challenge to create a tool for women who needed an empowering resource.
We brainstormed common flows for women in desperate situations who are seeking information in the women's health field, and came up with the Inaa platform (short for "I need an abortion"). Working together over the course of 36 hours, we designed and developed a working prototype.
We won first place, which awarded us a spot in their incubator program, and ultimately an opportunity to work closely with Planned Parenthood (and other women's health orgs) to bring structure to their databases.
ABOUT INAA
Targeted regulations of abortion providers (or TRAP laws) have been growing more and more popular with state legislatures across this country over the past decade. Weeks before we pitched the Inaa platform, we saw the Ohio house and senate pass *the* most restrictive regulations since Roe v. Wade. These laws don’t only target the abortion providers themselves, they target the people who are seeking these services. With these laws constantly in flux, it is impossible to find accurate and understandable information.
Inaa (standing for “I need an abortion”) is a free service that will provide users with fact-based accurate information based on their fields they input and funnel them to local services. Once users get to our site, after a google search or being directed by a health care provider, they’re asked to input 3 simple pieces of data: their age, zip code, and last period. None of this information is personally identifiable or will ever be stored. Privacy is our number one concern. After our user inputs their information, we’re able to filter down to only the information that is pertinent to them and help them start preparing for what they’re going to do and funnel them to appropriate services.
CRAFTING THE INFORMATION FLOW
We determined the top factors that would influence a woman's right to choose, and made a quick breakdown for an easy onboarding flow. Privacy was our number one concern. We wanted to make sure they understood that their responses were completely secure, and made sure to include copy to inform them throughout the experience.
I also recognized a major point of friction for the user is having to sort through a mountain of legal/financing options. My goal was to break it down so all of the information they were presented was based on their location and age, and was revealed in a breadcrumb/hyper-focused manner, hopefully making them feel less overwhelmed and more in control of the process.
WIREFRAMING
Now that I had a sense of information chunking, I wired the interface so my team could have a look at something a bit more visual before we started connecting it to a real database. We created our own database for this prototype, but made sure everything we revealed to the user could be realistically drawn from actual resources available through women's health programs.
FINAL PIXELS
I wanted the interface to feel approachable and friendly, so I selected an orange/gray color palette with an easy to read san serif font. I kept the calls to action one color and bold for easy scanning.
I'M ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR INTERESTING PROJECTS THAT HELP WOMEN.
