Motherhood is changing. Why isn’t the fertility process?
Press
The fertility industry might be a multi-billion-dollar one, but it is ignoring a growing market: single women. In this 3-part Fast Company feature, we showcase how a Smart Design team used creative director Stephanie Yung‘s pregnancy as a living design experiment, to birth a solution that reimagines a more inclusive and personalized fertility experience.
Fertility treatment is a process that is designed almost exclusively for couples, but as Smart’s Design Director, Stephanie Yung, began to think about having a family on her own, her biggest questions were “why is the fertility process still like this?” and “How could I help change it for other women like me?”. Applying her 20-year career in design and innovation, Stephanie began to document her entire experience, including trials, errors and triumphs, which became Project Junior.
From the learnings of her own journey, Jr. was born, a personalized digital service to help single women confidently and comfortably navigate through the typically fragmented fertility process. In this first article in this series, Stephanie explores the importance of a feature called “Your Village” – a tool to seamlessly communicate with friends and family, clustered to the support role they are playing throughout the process, whether that is emotional, practical or professional help. The feature helps avoid ill-timed questions, and keeps them in-sync with an interactive journey map and mood indicators to advise how you’re feeling. It also assists with the logistics of coordinating your villagers to join you at appointments, and can send personal, tailored messages to your network.
Having a strong support network was a huge factor in my success, helping me get through the daily — sometimes hourly — emotional and physical trials of starting a family on my own. Igniting this crucial conversation is also aimed at demonstrating to the fertility industry just how much room they have for improvement. Hopefully by creating Jr., more women will feel like having a child by themselves is not such an implausible idea.
To read the full article and check out Jr., visit fastcompany.com.
Read on for part 2 of the series: Why is the process of buying sperm so terrible? and part 3: Understanding your fertility is a nightmare: here is a better way.
Press
Good Morning America/ABC News: Single mom-to-be designing app to improve the fertility process for other single women
Jr. was conceptualized by Stephanie Yung and her strategic design team: Crystal Ellis, Sarah Phares, Semi Lee, Steffany Tran and Haley Rasmussen.