Beyond its health care services in local communities, Planned Parenthood is America’s biggest provider of free sex education. That’s critical at a time when less than half of states mandate it in schools.

Recently, however, it has faced defunding. This means millions could lose free resources -- especially teens. So the 100-year old nonprofit came to us asking how technology could help extend the care and advice offered in their centers.

In designing and building a new branded digital tool for teens, we had a few key aims.

-- Meet teens where they already are. 84% percent of them get their health information online, including information about STDs, puberty, consent, and pregnancy.

-- Get them answers fast, and at the time they’re most in need of a response.

-- Keep it fully anonymous.

-- Stay totally judgement free, like Planned Parenthood centers.

We concepted a range of potential digital products, and then partnered with a Brooklyn High School to define and launch the right one.

That led to the creation of Roo, Planned Parenthood's first AI-powered chatbot.

Roo answers questions about bodies, STD’s, consent, relationships and more. Content is vetted by doctors, available 24/7, and conversations are 100% anonymous. For four months, we worked together with students. Students helped us test Roo, and even helped name it -- to be gender neutral and catchy.

Chatbot tech has been used for years in customer service to boost efficiency and lower costs. But one pitfall is they can be highly impersonal.

The difference with Roo? It extends the human care from Planned Parenthood experts, and learns with every conversation.

To ensure we delivered a product that teens everywhere can really use, we knew it needed to be mobile-first, but not require an app download. Messaging is a natural behavior for teens, enabling us to deliver straightforward guidance in a lightweight, fun, accessible format.

We developed a fresh brand for the chatbot --including an interactive logo that contextually adapts with the content it’s responding to-- and a custom tone of voice for how the bot would chat with teens.

With Roo, you’ll get the same accurate, nonjudgmental information you’ve come to expect from the experts at Planned Parenthood -- just in more bite-sized pieces and GIFs.

The tool launched in January as a way to extend care for the already 2.4 million women, men, and young people at more than 600 centers nationwide.

Dr. Leana Wen, a doctor and the president of PPFA said: “We know that many young people are embarrassed to ask questions about their sexual health, and they often look for information online. They want to ask their questions anonymously and get a reliable answer they can trust.”

Within two weeks of launch in late January, there were over 25k conversations and it's rapidly inching to the goal of half a million within the first six months. Because Roo is an AI platform, it will continue learning and getting smarter —to produce more personalized results — with every conversation that it has.

Earned media was a success to help spread word of the tool's arrival, with widespread praise in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Ad Age, Adweek, PSFK, Healthline, Mashable, Bustle and more.