Noora Health · Caregiving Lab · Action Research · Aug–Sep 2025
What Do Families Actually Trust?
What Do Families Actually Trust?
Noora's Remote Engagement Service sends health content to families' phones through pregnancy and early parenthood. Built to be a trusted companion, not a telemedicine line. But nobody knew which content styles, formats, and sources rural families actually trust. Views were not the question. Behaviour was. Six weeks of action research in Haryana went looking for the answer.
Noora's Remote Engagement Service sends health content to families' phones through pregnancy and early parenthood. Built to be a trusted companion, not a telemedicine line. But nobody knew which content styles, formats, and sources rural families actually trust. Views were not the question. Behaviour was. Six weeks of action research in Haryana went looking for the answer.
My Role
Design Researcher
Timeline
Aug–Sep 2025 · 6 weeks
Methods
Phygital sort · Gallery walks · Role-reversal co-creation · Shadow scrolling
Team
Research team of 5 , Asha Workers
01 · Context
Views Were Not the Question
Views Were Not the Question
Content that gets watched but changes nothing is a quiet failure: the metrics look fine while the behaviour stays put. RES needed to know what earns trust before it scaled what merely earns views. We took the question to seven sites across Haryana, from Hisar to Rewari: 10 households, 4 urban and 6 rural, an Anganwadi, 19 participants. Mothers and fathers, before and after birth, ages 19 to 27, education from 4th standard to postgraduate.
Content that gets watched but changes nothing is a quiet failure: the metrics look fine while the behaviour stays put. RES needed to know what earns trust before it scaled what merely earns views. We took the question to seven sites across Haryana, from Hisar to Rewari: 10 households, 4 urban and 6 rural, an Anganwadi, 19 participants. Mothers and fathers, before and after birth, ages 19 to 27, education from 4th standard to postgraduate.
02 · Front Stage
A Forward on a Shared Phone
A Forward on a Shared Phone
What a family experiences is a WhatsApp forward arriving on a shared phone. A thumbnail, a title, thirty seconds of attention while the day happens around them. The phone itself is rarely private: husbands filter what wives see, children borrow it, storage runs out, and the feed decides what appears. Whatever RES sends walks into that reality, not into a quiet one-on-one with its intended reader.
What a family experiences is a WhatsApp forward arriving on a shared phone. A thumbnail, a title, thirty seconds of attention while the day happens around them. The phone itself is rarely private: husbands filter what wives see, children borrow it, storage runs out, and the feed decides what appears. Whatever RES sends walks into that reality, not into a quiet one-on-one with its intended reader.
03 · Backstage
Activities, Not Interviews
Activities, Not Interviews
Two-hour home sessions, built as activities instead of interviews. A phygital sort of real content, physical cards and live screens together. Gallery walks through what people had actually saved, searched, and shared. Rapid shadow scrolling: two minutes of their normal feed, then scenario prompts. And a role reversal at the centre of it: participants became the sender, curating forwards for three fictional mothers at different stages of pregnancy, choosing what to send, in whose voice, at what time. When people advise instead of answer, the performance drops away. The parameters underneath came from usability, behaviour change, and emotional design literature, folded into one testing framework.
Two-hour home sessions, built as activities instead of interviews. A phygital sort of real content, physical cards and live screens together. Gallery walks through what people had actually saved, searched, and shared. Rapid shadow scrolling: two minutes of their normal feed, then scenario prompts. And a role reversal at the centre of it: participants became the sender, curating forwards for three fictional mothers at different stages of pregnancy, choosing what to send, in whose voice, at what time. When people advise instead of answer, the performance drops away. The parameters underneath came from usability, behaviour change, and emotional design literature, folded into one testing framework.
04 · The Moment of Truth
Trust Is Layered
Trust Is Layered
Trust turned out to be layered, and no single layer is enough. A white coat earns fast trust, but action needs more: the advice has to match lived experience, come from a familiar sender, and be repeated by people around you. "It's coming from you. Then it can be trusted." The assumption that illustrated content could lead died in the field. Families are video-first, they scan titles before thumbnails, and their one question is: what is the solution to my problem? Live demonstration beat animation for anything practical, binary do-and-don't visuals stuck where nuance slid off, and for static images the words carry the meaning: "Without words these pictures are nothing." And the finding that reframed the service: the mother is often not the first viewer. On shared phones, husbands screen content and retell it. Whatever RES sends has to survive an intermediary.
Trust turned out to be layered, and no single layer is enough. A white coat earns fast trust, but action needs more: the advice has to match lived experience, come from a familiar sender, and be repeated by people around you. "It's coming from you. Then it can be trusted." The assumption that illustrated content could lead died in the field. Families are video-first, they scan titles before thumbnails, and their one question is: what is the solution to my problem? Live demonstration beat animation for anything practical, binary do-and-don't visuals stuck where nuance slid off, and for static images the words carry the meaning: "Without words these pictures are nothing." And the finding that reframed the service: the mother is often not the first viewer. On shared phones, husbands screen content and retell it. Whatever RES sends has to survive an intermediary.
05 · What It Became
Findings Into Direction
Findings Into Direction
The findings became direction: a format logic mapping each learning task to its medium, live action for practical behaviours, animation only for invisible processes, binary statics for quick decisions. A stage-by-stage content map from early pregnancy to postpartum. Sender and distribution principles, because who forwards the content is part of the content. And 10 testable hypotheses handed onward, so the next round of work starts sharper than this one did.
The findings became direction: a format logic mapping each learning task to its medium, live action for practical behaviours, animation only for invisible processes, binary statics for quick decisions. A stage-by-stage content map from early pregnancy to postpartum. Sender and distribution principles, because who forwards the content is part of the content. And 10 testable hypotheses handed onward, so the next round of work starts sharper than this one did.
07 · Outcomes
5 Validations
5 Validations
handed to program design team for improvements
10 Hypotheses
10 Hypotheses
handed to the program team, testable
08 · Reflection
People's stated preferences and their observed choices disagreed constantly. Mothers dismissed animation as childish, then chose an animated video minutes later. A questionnaire would have shipped the wrong answers with full confidence. The role reversal did the heaviest lifting: the moment someone curates content for another mother instead of reviewing it for us, the politeness drops and the real logic shows. Change the seat, not the question.
People's stated preferences and their observed choices disagreed constantly. Mothers dismissed animation as childish, then chose an animated video minutes later. A questionnaire would have shipped the wrong answers with full confidence. The role reversal did the heaviest lifting: the moment someone curates content for another mother instead of reviewing it for us, the politeness drops and the real logic shows. Change the seat, not the question.
Owned: activity and method design · field facilitation · synthesis · Hypothesis Creation
Worked with: a research team of 5 · ASHAs and Anganwadi workers · the program team
Didn't own: content production · program strategy · RES itself