Nanny Lane

Summary

In 2017 & 2018 I was the Design Director at CareGuide, which offers a suite of products to find care services - from child care all the way up to elder care.

In addition to mentoring a design team of four and supporting a suite of existing caregiving products, my first project was the launch of a new product called Nanny Lane. It's a platform to help families find affordable childcare. This includes nanny sharing: helping families find other families to share a nanny with. Each family pays less, nannies get paid more, kids make new friends...basically wins all 'round.

Knowing basically nothing about parenting, nannying, or how any of this would work, the first project I gave myself was to interview five parents and five nannies. We recorded the sessions (with their consent), and compensated them at the end with gift cards and swag.

For the first half-hour I just asked open-ended questions about childcare. It's important to come into these conversations without any bias and really listen to what people are saying. It was a great way to learn about the pain points people on both sides of the coin were feeling.

For the second half-hour we asked them to try out a beta version of our product. I had my own opinions on how it would perform, but I knew we needed feedback from actual parents and nannies. It's a lot easier to get a team aligned on what to fix when you can show them how people struggled with it.

Based on those sessions, we overhauled the interface and launched in a small number of targeted cities. As we gained more empathy about the daily struggles of commuting, we knew that we needed to grow this platform in a very localized way for it to be valuable.

After launch, we continued to evolve the product based on a steady stream of qualitative and quantitative data. From reading and responding to support tickets to looking at analytics, there's never enough to know about how to make people's lives easier.

If you're a parent looking for affordable childcare, check out Nanny Lane.