2024 Project
Website for Young Mothers.
A supportive community platform designed to empower moms as they navigate the next phase of motherhood. It provides a space for connection, shared experiences, and valuable resources, fostering meaningful discussions on parenting, self-care, and personal growth.
With a focus on inclusivity and real-life support, the platform helps moms build relationships, access expert insights, and find inspiration for balancing motherhood with their evolving personal and professional journeys.
ROLE
Lead Product Designer
TIMELINE
14 Weeks
PLATFORM
Web Dashboard
01 // THE CHALLENGE
Young mothers want to have a community where they can freely express their concerns and as questions as they transition into a different phase of their lives, being a mother.
15%
New mothers experience postpartum depression without being able to share with others.
Most existing solutions are too generic, providing only the journey of becoming a mother rather than a community with real-time questions, concerns, and support.
The Objective
Create an engaging community platform for young mothers who often face emotional challenges, including postpartum depression, and lack adequate support systems to help them cope with physical changes of becoming a mother.
Questions
Real-time Support
02 // DISCOVERY
Stakeholder Interviews
Conducted 5 deep-dive interviews with single first-time mothers and married first-time mothers to define data accuracy parameters.
User Archetyping
Developed two distinct personas: The first-time single mother and a couple that is having their first born.
Competitive Benchmarking
Analyzed over 5 market competitors to identify the "Technical Void" in having a community for young mothers to support each other.
03 // PROCESS
It all began with research to design a solution: I conducted user interviews, created a questionnaire that allowed to guide the process and created a sitemap based on participants feedback on important points through their experience as a young mother. Young mothers often face emotional challenges, including postpartum depression, and lack adequate support systems to help them cope with physical changes of becoming a mother.
RESEARCH
SYNTHESIZE
IDEATE
PROTOTYPE
VALIDATE
3.1 // RESEARCH
For my user research, I recruited 5 participants from diverse backgrounds to ensure a comprehensive understanding of first-time mothers’ challenges. Participants’ age when they became a mother ranged from 21 to 31 years young. For a deeper research I asked participants how they coped with transitioning to motherhood, what resources they explored during and after the pregnancy, and what support system they had through their journey.
Young mothers often suffer with postpartum depression and do not open up to their partners about their emotional struggles in transitioning to motherhood.
This led me to ask…
How can I help young mother to locate accurate information on what to expect through pregnancy and after?
How can I connect them to other mothers with similar experience and questions?
How can I provide resources and support to young mothers through such pivotal transition?
3.2 // SYNTHESIZE
Based on the insights gathered, I developed a persona to represent my target users. This persona helped guide the design process by keeping the users' needs and experiences at the forefront.
PERSONA
“We are expecting our firstborn in 3 months, and I want to be prepared to what is to come. I want to have a support website where I can ask any question when I become a mom.”
About: Emily lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband,
Jake. They are expecting their first child in three months.
Emily has always been career-focused but is excited and a
bit anxious about the upcoming changes in her life.
Pain Points
• Overwhelmed by the vast amount of information about pregnancy and childbirth
• Lack of support
• Anxious about physical and emotional changes ahead
Needs and Goals
• Trustworthy and clear information about pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care.
• Supportive community to connect with other expectant
mothers who share similar experiences and challenges.
• Emotional support
• Encouragement
Emily
Age: 24
Occupation: Systems Administrator
Marital Status: Married
3.3 // IDEATE
I brainstormed various features that could support new mothers. I used collaborative tools such as FigJam to visualize and prioritize these ideas ensuring they aligned with the key pain points identified during user research.
Lo-Fi Sketches
I started with sketches of the features emphasized in my research and created a dozen variations of the website layout that would be easy to navigate.
3.4 // PROTOTYPE
Hi-Fi Prototype
Moving forward with the process, I turned my Lo-Fi sketches into Hi-Fi prototypes. Below are the screen comparison showing before and after side by side.
Clickable Prototype
Clickable prototype was created to test the ideas and validate the design. It was helpful for me to test users on the tasks that showcase the pages and to understand if the users were able to navigate through the pages freely. The prototype only covers the aspects of the pages designed to collect the feedback for future development of this idea.
04 // VALIDATE
I conducted user testing sessions with three participants individually gathering feedback and suggestions for improvement. Based on feedback from usability testing and participants’ review of the high-fidelity wireframes, I continued to iterate my designs.
Changed the products of the pregnancy to be first and then items relevant to babies
Based on feedback from usability testing, it was suggested to add a page for postpartum support since young mothers emphasize the lack of support after giving birth.
Brief description of Postpartum and how to begin a recovery journey
Articles on self-care that include emotional well-being and how to regain control over your life.
05 // CONCLUSION
There's definitely more to becoming a mother, hence, the community to support young and first-time mothers is crucial for success of our future generations.
Future Steps:
Continue with iterating an app version of a website.
Create flows and build features for parenthood education.
Build an AI chatbot that will help with supporting mothers when no one is available in the group.
After Thoughts
This UX case study has been challenging and rewarding at the same time. As I began, I was overwhelmed by the idea of tallking to strangers for the usability testing and for initial research by conducting interviews. Nevertheless, it turned out to be an incredible experience and journey to learn the process of user centric design and what users really need. Even though, I had a short timeline for this project, I am grateful to learn that small projects as such are able to change the world.
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