Kuleanet Mobile App Design and Testing

Project Background and Description African American/Black (AA/B) women have the lowest BF initiation and EBF rates among all racial ethnicities in the US. Approximately 73.7% of AA/B women initiate BF (versus 86.7% white women) with only 21.2% of AA/B infants being exclusively breastfed at six months. AA/B women experience barriers on various socio-ecological levels to initiating, continuing BF, and maintaining EBF (e.g., discontinuing BF or introducing supplements and other foods).  KULEA-NET will provide comprehensive BF support to nurture and support AA/B women in BF initiation and EBF, and include the following innovative features: a) Social marketing and health branding to promote EBF as a socially desirable behavior; b) Micro-learning educational content to improve the acquisition of knowledge and skills related to EBF; c) Support network communication tools leveraging asynchronous communication that allow mothers to communicate with her BF supporters, peers, and lactation professional supports; d) Context-aware delivery framework that will capitalize on user information such as date of delivery, feeding and diaper log data, and location variables to provide timely feedback, content, and guidance; and e) a Virtual community support network bringing together AA/B mothers and their spouse/family members, and fostering a community of mutual support. For the project, we are doing an iteration on the development of a mobile app for breastfeeding African American/Black women. For the Springboard team, we want the team to develop initial mock-ups and test them with African American/Black women. We have components of the app ready and we would like the team to start the design/development of initial wireframes.