ROO is a digitally native healthcare service that provides accessible carrier screening for recessive genetic disorders. The project was developed in partnership with the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Together with a diverse cohort of healthcare experts and patients, we designed a service that can provide quick, easy, and equal access to these crucial genetic tests. In accordance with our research, we focused on couples and parents-to-be as they represent the population segment that can benefit the most from carrier screening. This specific user-base coupled with the complex and delicate topic of genomics required a tactful and empathy-driven design process. This balance between creating an efficient and simultaneously empathic and user-centred service was the core challenge and objective of this project.

Following our extensive primary and secondary research, we found several interesting insights, however, one in particular caught our eyes. As medical experts described to us, patients—in this case couples—are often advised to take a genetic test rather late in their pregnancy. However, moving the entry point of carrier screening forward—even before conception—would anticipate hard decisions that couples have to take once a baby has been already conceived. To better underline the thought process that young couples currently undergo before having a child, we conducted further interviews with young mothers. We summarized our research in a comprehensive matrix where we divided what they "think", "do", "say" and "feel". Four key actions that later in the project were used to ideate services that can nudge people to perceive screening tests not as an antenatal service, but rather as a preventive solution that gives comprehensive information to young couples so they can act accordingly.