Kindred
A mobile app that supports birthing parents in postpartum
Project Brief
This project spanned 16 weeks, consisting of generative and evaluative research, concept validation, experiments, and prototyping. The objective was to identify a major challenge that birthing parents face, and to create a solution that could improve their experiences in postpartum.
my role
I collaborated with my fellow co-founder on every stage of this project. In addition, I handled all aspects of UI design.
tools
Figma, Miro, Mural, Whimsical, Maze, Google Voice, Amazon Mechanical Turk
UX/UI | Product Design | Generative & Evaluative Research
Initial Problem Discovery
The "Fourth Trimester"
We set out to better understand the problems that first-time birthing parents face, and it quickly became apparent that there was an unmet need during the period immediately after having a child.
After giving birth, first-time birthing parents' lives change overnight. They:
- Are making decisions they've never had to make before
- Face a steep and uncomfortable learning curve
This often results in them feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and isolated.
Learning Journey of a First-Time Birthing Parent
With this in mind, we set out to learn more about the experiences of birthing parents during this period known as the “fourth trimester,” the initial three months of postpartum, so we could identify opportunities and ideate solutions.
Process
Research
User Interviews
We conducted qualitative research and spoke with 20 people, including birthing parents and their partners, those in the support network, and postpartum doulas. These standout quotes informed our designs:
“If I ask for help, I'm being vulnerable. And if they don't help me, it's like they're letting me down—I don't want to be let down.”
-Maddie, 4 months postpartum
“Asking someone to take their precious time to come sit on our couch while we go out [...] I know my friends mean it when they offer [to babysit]—it just hasn't felt comfortable to take them up on it.”
-Nicole, 1.5 years postpartum
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“The best analogy I've heard is that people spend so much time focusing on the wedding [...] and then don't think about the marriage. [A lot of families are] almost tunnel-visioned on the birth.”
-Jessie, Austin-based postpartum doula
Narrowing in on the Problem
Through our research, we found many potential problems that we could focus on. We plotted them on a 2x2 to better understand how we might design to solve for difficult issues along with our ability to impact them. Based on these criteria, we decided to focus specifically on the problem of birthing parents feeling deprioritized after the baby arrives and simultaneously struggling to ask for help.
Insights & Opportunities
We developed three insights and identified three opportunities to address these two primary interconnected problems.
insight 1
Birthing parents focus primarily on preparing for their baby, and less on their postpartum care and recovery.
opportunity 1
How might we encourage birthing parents to prioritize their postpartum care and recovery?
insight 2
Asking for help feels especially risky for birthing parents because they’re putting themselves in a position to be judged, disappointed, or rejected when they’re already feeling vulnerable.
opportunity 2
How might we highlight the benefits of connecting with sources of support while sharing the potential risks of not asking for help?
insight 3
Friends and family want to be supportive, but they don’t always know how or when to be most helpful.
opportunity 3
How might we facilitate communication and coordination between birthing parents and their support network?
Ideation & Concept Testing
One of the principles of my design process is conducting divergent thinking before narrowing down to a few promising ideas. We developed over 200 ideas across a spectrum of possibilities, and narrowed down to a few ideas to test with users based on our ability to:
- Get the idea/solution up and running
- Address a meaningful problem
Using storyboards, we found that users resonated most with the concept of an app that makes coordination and communication easier with their loved ones during postpartum.
Storyboard credit: Annie Ly
“This idea really resonated because my brother’s idea of helping was holding the baby for 10 minutes. And I remember thinking how it'd be more helpful if he just walked the dog.”
-Jen, 1 year postpartum
design Principles
The following principles guided us as we narrowed in on a solution:
- Facilitate face-to-face interactions
- Encourage community support
- Celebrate the parents
- Offload mental work
Competitive Analysis
We conducted a competitive analysis of existing solutions, and all the ones we were aware of either: a) Did not focus specifically on birthing parents, or b) Did not make communication / coordination easier.
We saw an opportunity to better facilitate the transition into postpartum for birthing parents through both:
- Learning about and preparing for the "fourth trimester"
- Communicating and coordinating with support network
Minimum Viable Product
fundamental hypothesis
Before building a high-fidelity mock-up, we needed to isolate and test our fundamental hypothesis, which we identified as:
If expectant parents are provided with bite-sized information about the "fourth trimester," then they will take action towards preparing for postpartum, including reaching out to someone in their support network.
Experiments
In order to test our hypothesis, we utilized aWizard of Oz method.
We used Google Voice to provide users with simple daily assignments for three days, requesting that they submit a short voice memo at the end of each day telling us about their experience (including whether or not they took action).
- Day 1: Reference these materials to learn about the 4th trimester
- Day 2: Fill in the blanks of a few scenarios to understand who you might lean on in 4th trimester
- Day 3: Use (and personalize) a template message to reach out to someone you identified in your support network
Through conducting this experiment with three participants, we confirmed that bite-sized information and small nudges to take action can help expectant parents reach out to their support network.
user flow
We followed the design process of continuously making and then testing in order to narrow in on the problem that we were solving for. We generated a low-fidelity user flow and tested our assumptions as we navigated through what shape our solution would take.
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Final Product
Product Vision
By preparing for postpartum in the prepartum stage, Kindred users would be able to easily communicate and coordinate care and support with their village.
features
Small, manageable steps to prepare for postpartum support
Bite-sized information about postpartum and the “fourth trimester”
Prompts to identify who they might lean on for postpartum support
Scenarios that help birthing parents think through what postpartum support might look like
Guidance to make it easier to reach out for support
Template messages they can personalize and send to people in their support network
Shared visibility into what the birthing parent needs, when they need it
Calendar view to make it easier to request and schedule acts of care and support
In addition, Kindred would:
- Provide the ability to easily send out requests to people in their support network, including auto-populating requests for people who aren’t sure what they need
- Allow people in the parent’s support network to easily opt in to the types of care and support they want to provide
Reflection
My passion for women's health and frustration with the inequality in our healthcare system fueled my motivation to make Kindred a beneficial tool for those experiencing difficulties in postpartum. An enormous amount of blood, sweat, tears, and most of all, research, went into this capstone project as we evaluated both business viability and impact.
My favorite aspect of this project was the ideation and concept validation phase, as it was incredibly exciting to hear from users how Kindred would address an important need in their lives, as well as to tailor our product to more closely align with their needs. Our excitement grew when we presented our findings and solution to a large audience, and were approached by investors who were interested in helping us to turn our project into a real product. If we were to continue with Kindred, next steps would include conducting moderated and unmoderated usability testing to further determine and explore users' preferences.
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