Since everyone’s body, needs, and goals are unique, frequent and close interactions with unsuitable products can result in negative physical and mental experiences. Yet breast pumps are still mass-produced products, and finding the right product for themselves can be challenging for mothers. As a result, a new design strategy, product personalisation, is offered to address the problem of users’ particular demands not being satisfied.

This collaboration between Philips Experience Design and the NEXT UPPS project team explores the UPPS framework’s application possibilities in its MCC (Mother and Child Care) context. NEXT UPPS team, on the other hand, intends to complete different aspects of its design approach through the application of concepts to real-world case studies.

This graduation project aims to help mothers better engage in the co-creation process to obtain a more personalised breast pumping product that truly fits their needs. To design a co-creation experience that can motivate participation, research activities were carried out to understand mothers’ needs and concerns regarding breast pumping from multiple perspectives and to explore appropriate design opportunities across the whole breast pumping journey.

The research revealed that it could be challenging for inexperienced moms to articulate their needs to get personalised products. In addition, the mother’s high reliance on medical professionals in the early stages of childbirth shows that the co-creation of unfamiliar products is even more difficult. To overcome this problem, the goal of the design phase was to design a supportive and informative process that guides mothers to finish the task easily within co-creation. The design should provide an experience that mothers can feel secure, as easily facing unknown challenges with the support of medical professionals.

This project presented a product customisation webpage and a self-scanning mobile App to conquer the challenge. The product customisation webpage guides participants step-by-step through a question-and-answer interaction to customise breast pump products while allowing them to explore and understand their needs. The self-scanning mobile app guides women to easily and independently complete body measurement through clear and simple instructions, so as to obtain more personalised offers in product personalisation.It has been proven in user testing that the Q&A interaction can motivate users’ participation while stimulating them to reflect on their product needs. However, although the guidance of the body scan can help users complete body measurement quickly and effectively, users still have concerns about data sharing.