- Title
- Physical and emotional touchpoints influencing user journeys : how mothers navigate through the maternity and early childhood development service systems in a rural Victorian city
- Creator
- O'Neill, Carina
- Date
- 2023
- Type
- Text; Thesis; Masters
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/196793
- Identifier
- vital:18768
- Abstract
- The quality of maternity and early childhood development service systems has a profound impact on children’s capacity to grow, learn and thrive throughout their lifespans. This research study investigated the experiences of first-time mothers attempting to navigate complex, disjointed service systems in a small rural Australian city. The study aimed to identify the critical touchpoints that first-time mothers often encountered when navigating maternity and early childhood development service systems from conception to school and then generate a broader understanding of how the individual and collective user might navigate through this period. In my capacity as the manager of a major early childhood service in this small city, I was able to apply my critical, reflexive insights of the service to the development of this research study. This descriptive, retrospective study employed a qualitative methodology. A novel, user-centred design approach – drawing upon the concept of service touchpoints – was applied to explain families’ experiences of using services from the point of their child’s conception until the commencement of school. A self-selected sample of eight first-time mothers participated in the study. Comprehensive, tape-recorded interviews were conducted with the mothers that incorporated innovative tools for generating ideas and identifying critical touchpoints during the mothers’ user journey. The data was analysed to produce four products: a cross-case, thematic analysis of the families’ experiences; a visual user journey map containing the physical and emotional service touchpoints for each individual family; and two customer journey maps (one showing physical touchpoints; the other showing emotional touchpoints) to visually represent the typical user’s experience. The four major themes that emerged were: (1) dissonance between expectations and the lived reality; (2) the continuum of support from ideal to going “above and beyond”; (3) social isolation and lack of information; and (4) the need to become experts/advocates to make informed choices. The two conjoint customer journey maps revealed that a lack of service knowledge, unclear processes and disruptions in service transitions impacted on the physical service experience. However, surprisingly, it was the emotional – rather than the physical –touchpoints that were most significant for these mothers.; Masters of the Arts
- Publisher
- Federation University Australia
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- Copyright Carina O'Neill
- Rights
- Open Access
- Subject
- Service design; User centred; Touchpoints; User Journey; Customer Journey Mapping; Maternity
- Full Text
- Thesis Supervisor
- Sadowski, Christina
- Hits: 1261
- Visitors: 944
- Downloads: 43
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE2 | Australian Digital Thesis | 6 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |