Information Seeking in Early Parenting

Early parenting is often characterised by uncertainty. Parents frequently search for information about pregnancy, infant feeding, developmental milestones, illness symptoms, and caregiving practices. Traditional health communication models tend to assume that information flows from healthcare providers to patients through formal channels. However, everyday experiences reveal a much more complex information ecosystem.

Parents rarely rely on a single source of information. Instead, they navigate a network of sources that may include healthcare professionals, family members, friends, online communities, and digital platforms. In many contexts, these sources complement one another. Formal medical advice may be combined with experiential knowledge from peers, cultural practices shared by elders, and advice circulated within social networks.

Understanding how parents move across these different sources of information is essential for designing digital tools that reflect real-world information practices rather than idealised models of information delivery.

WhatsApp as a Peer Support Infrastructure

One of the central insights of my research is the role of social media platforms particularly WhatsApp in shaping peer support during early parenting. In many communities, WhatsApp groups function as informal infrastructures where parents exchange advice, share experiences, and provide emotional support.

These groups often include mothers, fathers, extended family members, and sometimes health professionals. Conversations may range from questions about breastfeeding and infant sleep patterns to discussions about clinic visits or vaccination schedules. Beyond information exchange, these groups also provide reassurance, validation, and a sense of shared experience.

From an HCI perspective, platforms like WhatsApp are not merely communication tools. They act as socio-technical environments that support collective caregiving practices. The design of digital health technologies should therefore consider how such existing communication infrastructures already support parents, rather than attempting to replace them with entirely new systems.

Moving Beyond Individualised Design

Many digital health interventions are designed around individual users. Pregnancy apps, for example, often target mothers as the primary user and focus on delivering personalised information through notifications, tracking features, or educational content.

While these tools can be valuable, they often overlook the broader social context within which caregiving occurs. Parenting rarely happens in isolation. It is embedded within family relationships, community support structures, and cultural caregiving practices.

My research argues for a shift from individualised digital health interventions toward more socially embedded design approaches. Technologies that recognise the collective nature of caregiving may be better positioned to support parents’ everyday realities. This perspective aligns with broader conversations within HCI about designing technologies that account for social relations, shared responsibilities, and collaborative decision-making.

Participatory and Co-Design Approaches

Methodologically, my research adopts qualitative and participatory approaches. Rather than designing technologies solely from the perspective of researchers or developers, participatory design methods involve parents and community members directly in the design process. Through interviews, observations, and co-design activities, participants share their experiences of seeking health information, their challenges navigating digital tools, and their perspectives on what meaningful technological support might look like. These engagements help surface forms of knowledge that may otherwise be overlooked in conventional design processes.

Participatory approaches are particularly important in low-resource contexts, where technological interventions are often introduced without sufficient attention to local realities. By centering lived experiences and community knowledge, co-design processes can contribute to technologies that are more relevant, culturally appropriate, and sustainable.

Contributions to HCI and Digital Health

This research contributes to ongoing discussions in both HCI and digital health. First, it advances understanding of information behaviour in early parenting, particularly within contexts where digital and social infrastructures intersect in complex ways. Second, it highlights the importance of peer support networks as key components of health information ecosystems. Third, it demonstrates the value of participatory design approaches in developing technologies that reflect the social realities of caregiving. The this work goes beyond to design new digital tools, arguing for a rethink of how technologies can support existing caregiving ecologies. By recognising the collective and relational nature of parenting, digital health innovations can move toward more inclusive, contextually grounded, and socially responsive forms of design.

Looking Ahead

Building on this research, my future work aims to deepen collaborations between HCI, global health, and implementation science. This includes developing and evaluating community-centered digital interventions that strengthen primary healthcare systems and improve access to health information for families.

Through interdisciplinary collaboration and participatory design, I hope to contribute to a growing body of work that reimagines digital health technologies as tools that support not replace the social infrastructures of care that families rely on every day.

 Research Team