GLOW MAMA
The Client
Pregnancy Center West
The Project Scope
Brand design
UX design
App design
The Challenge
Create an app to be a resource for pregnant mothers, so they can learn to cope with their stress in a healthy way and therefore make the pregnancy a little easier.
Annie Jacquemin Senior Capstone Project: Glow Mama
The Problem
First-time mothers deal with a lot of stress, but the needs of the mother can sometimes be ignored. Many pregnant moms have a whole new set of worries but they don’t always have ways to help them cope in a healthy way.
How can I create a resource to help educate on the topic of emotional intelligence for first-time pregnant mothers living in Ohio and Indiana 20-30 years old that will help them cope with stress during their pregnancy?
Success Statment
I will know the design solution is successful when I am able to test it on participants within my target audience and receive positive feedback and be able to record a reduction in stress or utilization of better ways or coping from users in my target audience.
Target Audience
My audience for my research are pregnant moms aged 20-30 years old as that is the average age for pregnant mothers. Indiana and Ohio because I have connections to participants within those areas.
Survey Says…
55% of moms don’t use any kind of meditation/mindfulness/journaling exercises
Which reassured me that there is a need for a pregnancy mental health app.
I also discovered that the main pregnancy stressors fall within physical/body changes, life changes, planning, and uncertainty
Content Analysis
I completed a Content Analysis to further look into resources to help with healthy coping of stressors. I came across Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, also known as CBT.
“a type of psychological therapy that assumes the individual seeking treatment has maladaptive, or counterproductive, thinking patterns, which in turn cause maladaptive behavior and “negative” emotions.”
CBT could offer pregnant mothers positive and mindful techniques to change negative behaviors so they can more successfully cope with their stressors.
Thefreedictionary.com states that CBT is,
Interviews
Next, I completed Interviews to gain a deeper understanding of stress experiences from the moms who completed my survey. I gathered some interesting insights from these interviews.
"Moms get overlooked. You’re not really doing things for yourself, you’re doing things for the baby."
"It helps to reduce stress by having a circle that encourages you and doesn’t make you feel like birth is a scary thing, but that it’s natural and normal and you’ll be fine.”
"Having educated people tell you that you’re going to be fine, it helps calm your nerves."
"Getting reassurance and knowledge really brought [my] stress down."
Coaching
Techniques
Community
These were the most helpful coping techniques according to the interviews.
These insights helped drive my next steps in developing my project.
Here are some insights gathered from my interviews:
Moodboard
-Relieving stress
-Inspiration from meditation apps
Design + Testing
The design of the app and testing were completed in unison as results from testing help drive how the app was designed.
I tested the app by sending a prototype app to a participant and observing them navigate the app when given specific tasks to complete.
Testing participant navigating the Glow Mama app
Brand Style
-Calm
-Uplifting
-Fun
Final App Design
Onboarding Glow Mama
Adding stressors to your profile
Daily check-in feature
Check-in Page
Onboarding
-Splash page, signup screen, name, due date
-Intro of CBT, how it can help, what’s expected
-Setting up rewards to incentivize good practice
Adding Stressors
-Title the stressor, choose the category it falls in
-Create a goal mindset you want to have when thinking about this stressor
-Add affirming phrases that combat the stressor
-Choose techniques that have helped in the past or may be interesting to try out
When on the home screen, the stressor will appear. It would show a page with the to-do list to help with the stressor, show the goal mindset, progress on hard work, affirmations and techniques being practiced for this stressor.
Daily Check-In
-The homepage will have a reminder to complete your daily check-in to keep your streak
-Give the user a scale of what stressor is causing them the most worry
-How they feel
-Check all emotions relating to them and why
-Checking the affirmations and techniques that are helping to keep an updated page
-The result will give them other techniques that might help their current situation
-It will show a infographic of the weeks’ mood
Check-In Page
-CBT encourages the users meet with CBT therapists to get one-on-one support
-Schedule a visit
-Check-in page shows upcoming therapist visits, prompts you to take the daily check-in quiz if not already done, shows the streak, as well as past check-in results.
Community Page
Community Signup
-Create an account to be a part of the community page
-Automatically adds you to the group for the month the user is due
-Suggested groups to follow
-Popular groups
-Can also search groups according to specific worries
-This page acts similar to a Facebook group, but is monitored by CBT professionals
-Used to give support and encouragement to the users
Positive Feedback
“I wish I could have used this for my last pregnancy! This would have been so helpful for me. I would use it even now.”
“As a first time mom, I would definitely use this app. There are so many things you stress about when you’re pregnant, so this would be perfect”
“I would have loved to use this when I was pregnant. I like that everything is in one place, too. I could have learned how to deal with the stress which would have been great!”
