Penelope
My role at Future Arc was to lead on venture building activity. This included offering guidance to in-house opportunities and ventures, as well as working with external startup clients.
Penelope was an idea I discover whilst working in this role, I have now built and led this project privately.
Take a look at the site we are building…..
Project
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The UK childcare has been broken for a long time, with little strategic change from government. (There are steps of change, but the application process to access Tax Free Childcare (giving parents £2,000 free childcare) is so convoluted 40% of eligible parents don’t apply due to its complexity.
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We carried out extensive primary and secondary research with parents. Tapping into
Mumsnet and facebook forums, poling opinions and pain points
Pregnant then screwed charity research
First hand interviews with mothers/ fathers
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I led a hackathon with designers, researchers, and developers to patch together platforms that could initially help parents.
Built test platforms for user testing
Trialled the platform with real parents and their real needs.
On leaving future Arc I have taken this project on personally and been furthering the research, design and build independatly with freelancers
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Working with an Ex product manager from the Department of Education we have designed the brand, platform and user experience.
Penelope is now in a build phase and will launch later in 2024.
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This role stretched my experience beyond design and has further equipped me with experience of the requirements of running a business.
Persoanlly I have led all business activity to take this platform a design and idea to a functional business.
Launching Q2 2024
32
hours of interviews and research with real parents
9
months of category research, unearthing insights and issues in the UK childcare market
3
Proposition pivots, from insight learning with real parents
100%
Self led, and funded
2024
Launching Q2 2024
Service Design Mapping
Journey Mapping
To understand the flaws in the current system we needed to understand the current processes.
This resulted in multiple iterations of service journey maps, reflecting both front end and back end.
The Platform will go live in Q2 2024.
Identifying users
Multi Sourced Research
As a working team we sourced research from multiple sources
User interviews/ Focus Groups
Facebook & Linkedin communities
Primary and secondary sources (newspapers, gov.co.uk, existing provider UI/ UX audits)
Identifying users
Insight & Design led Proposition
Leading this project enabled me to lead from the proposition ideation, the service offering, through to the service design. Supportive and informative information for parents to act on based on their personal predicament is a missed opportunity in the current market. This is how we intend to gain market share and support parents.
All our ideation and service build has been thanks to the depth of early stage research we were able to conduct.
User recruitment
Free Guides & Knowledge sharing
A key recruitment tactic of users is providing support and key information relevant to them and their childcare journey. On platform we have automated these questions into the onboarding to enable targeted knowledge and support to parents with clarity in the advice they read.
Brand Building & Design Strategy
Inclusive Design
So many providers in this space use cliched imagery and lack the representation of what modern family means. At Penelope we wanted our brand identity to reflect our ambition for inclusivity and change in the category.
Our Penny Character’s, we enhance with illustrations that enable our characters to express emotions and depict the story needed.
