Naomi Knows — What if health info felt like a chat with a trusted friend?
Naomi Knows is a mobile-first website designed to help adolescent girls explore sensitive health topics through familiar, friendly conversations. Created in partnership with Johns Hopkins’ Growing Girls Project, the experience aimed to provide guidance on questions that are often hard to ask, delivered in the tone of a trusted peer rather than a professional.
Built around a text-based interaction model, the site allows users to explore a wide range of topics—from menstruation and contraception to sexting and mental health—through simulated conversations with a character named Naomi and the Growing Girls texting cast. The result is a private, self-directed, and approachable experience tailored for a mobile-first generation.
DISCIPLINES
UX Writing
Communications Design
Content Strategy
Research Synthesis
TOOLS
Sketch
InVision
Miro
Adobe Illustrator
Background & Objectives
The Growing Girls Project team at Johns Hopkins identified a gap in how adolescent girls accessed health information: while content was available, it was often too clinical, impersonal, or difficult to find. There was a clear need for a more approachable, nonjudgmental platform that felt native to teens’ everyday digital behavior.
The design challenge was to create a resource that was trustworthy, accessible, and genuinely resonant—something that could live comfortably alongside TikTok, Instagram, and group chats, not apart from them.
Research & Insights
We began with focus groups in the Baltimore Public School system. Teens told us exactly what they needed—and what they didn’t.
They wanted anonymity.
They needed to ask questions without fear of judgment.
They wanted intimacy.
The format had to feel warm and conversational.
They wanted it on their phones.
As one user said, “If it isn’t on my phone, I won’t see it.”
These findings shaped both the content strategy and the interface, ensuring that the experience felt discreet, familiar, and empowering.
Design Approach
1. Conversation as Interface
Rather than presenting static articles or clinical FAQs, the experience was structured around text-message-style conversations. Users could select and read through chat transcripts between Naomi and a variety of fictional characters, each tackling a different subject.
2. Naomi as a Persona
We developed Naomi as a character—a trusted voice who’s part older sister, part mentor, part peer. Her tone was straightforward but kind, never clinical or moralizing.
3. Modular Topics, User-Directed
Users were free to explore any topic that resonated, without a prescribed order. This non-linear structure supported privacy and personal agency—especially important for sensitive content.
4. Mobile-First Design
Design choices were intentionally modeled after native messaging platforms to create a seamless mobile experience, blending educational content into a format that felt natural and unobtrusive.
Impact & Reflections
Naomi Knows served as a proof of concept for how human-centered design can reshape adolescent health education. Feedback from both the Johns Hopkins team and community partners confirmed that the site is as a promising model for future public health communication with harder-to-reach audiences, particularly in urban and under-resourced settings.
The Naomi Knows project illustrated how design can act as a bridge—translating expertise into empathy. By structuring the experience around storytelling, warmth, and user-defined navigation, the work pushed beyond usability and into emotional resonance. The project also demonstrated how design decisions, when grounded in direct insight, can meaningfully shift how underserved audiences connect with critical information.
