Designing a Digital Field Guide to Advance Newborn Health

In 2017, the Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises (IAWG) published the Newborn Health in Humanitarian Settings: Field Guide (NBFG) to advance maternal and newborn health in humanitarian settings. The field guide and associated newborn supply kits are an important resource for humanitarian responders to provide high-quality maternal healthcare in the midst of crises. The 200-page field guide is currently available in four languages in print and PDF format, and it has been disseminated by implementing agencies within several countries.

In order to improve the adaptability and user-friendliness of the NBFG, Scope designed an accessible, mobile-friendly, digital interface for the life-saving field guide that is optimised for low-bandwidth settings. The dynamic content also includes case studies from different stakeholders and an extensive list of resources, references, and technical guidelines. The digitised field guide is designed to accommodate future updates and revisions as new tools and resources are being released regularly to support the implementation of newborn health in emergencies.

Our approach

Scope combined our participatory design expertise with an agile development process to ensure efficiency and allow for optimisation in every step of the design process. The process engaged the core team of representatives from various working groups as well as target audiences to capture their requirements and needs. Based on the insights, we designed the website structure, visual concept, and interactive prototypes for the digital field guide. Then we rigorously validated, iterated, and tested the digital interface before its release to ensure that the digitised NBFG best benefits humanitarian responders in crises.

Project outcomes

Scope delivered a user-friendly, digital version of the Newborn Health in Humanitarian Settings Field Guide that is easy to navigate, accessible through mobile and digital technologies, optimised for users in low-bandwidth settings, and tailored to accommodate updates and revisions of content.