Breast Feeding Friend

England has among the lowest rates of breastfeeding in the world. Only 44% of Mums are still breastfeeding after eight weeks and by six months, just 1% of babies are wholly breastfed.
Increasing breastfeeding rates would have tangible societal benefits – minimising the load on the NHS from fewer infant infections and from a lowered risk of breast cancer. But when Mum’s struggle to breastfeed or worry that their baby isn’t getting enough milk, they switch to bottle.
We worked with Public Health England (PHE) to understand how a lack of support whilst breastfeeding increases the likelihood of giving up. So we set out to fix the issue.

Analysis of search trends for breastfeeding advice showed a peak between 2.00 – 6.00am when helplines are closed, and women feel they are unable to phone friends or family for advice. Not only are these times of high stress, they are also times when Mum’s literally have both hands full – so even reaching for a smartphone to search for advice is problematic.

So, how could Mum’s access breastfeeding advice whenever they needed it, whatever the hour, instantly, baby in arms and hands-free?

We developed the ‘Start4Life Breastfeeding Friend’ – the UK’s first bespoke breastfeeding voice assistant to run on connected home and mobile devices (Amazon Alexa + Google Assistant).

To ensure the Breastfeeding Friend could answer Mothers’ most pressing questions, we analysed both search terms and data from Start4Life’s breastfeeding chatbot to identify and prioritise the most frequent queries.

Once the beta version was built, we established a testing partnership with one of the UK’s largest mum websites – Mumsnet – to allow new breastfeeding mums to experience the voice assistant (or Skill) and provide instant feedback so we could evolve the Skill accordingly.

Mum’s experiencing the Voice skill found Alexa’s robotic voice irritating overnight, with a less-than reassuring tone. They also wanted content tailored to their baby’s age. We consequently ran extensive casting to find the perfect voice a friendly, caring and reassuring midwife, and segmented our content.