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Culturally Grounded Wellness App for Postpartum Mothers

For our master's capstone at Georgia Tech, we designed a holistic wellness app to support low-SES postpartum mothers by centering culturally grounded, community-based features that promote mental wellness, self-advocacy, and accessible care.

Capstone Project

B2C

UX Design

UX Research

Timeline
Sep 2024 - Apr 2025 (8 months)

My Role
Product designer (UX research, UX design, prototyping, evaluation)

Team
1 designer (me), 2 researchers (Swathi Ram, Leesan Sun)

01 / Project Overview

Postpartum mothers in marginalized communities face serious wellness challenges, but existing systems often fail to listen and provide culturally connected care.

02 / Background & Motivation

To understand the problem, we examined the maternal health landscape for postpartum mothers from low socioeconomic status (SES) and minoritized backgrounds.

What specific challenges does this user group face, and why are existing systems falling short? Here’s what we found:

Disparities in Health Outcomes

Around 1 in 7 women experience postpartum depression (PPD), with mothers from low-income backgrounds facing higher risks of PPD and poor health outcomes. Financial strain, inadequate support, and chronic stressors all add to their vulnerability.

Systemic Barriers for Black Mothers

Black mothers face compounded challenges shaped by systemic barriers, including medical dismissal, cultural disconnects in care, and a legacy of reproductive harm. These experiences often lead to deep gaps in trust and access to treatment.

Gaps in the Continuity of Care

For many, care is fragmented and hard to access, with structural barriers such as limited providers, transportation issues, and reliance on Medicaid creating gaps in support.

Our findings led us to our core research question:

How might we better support the wellness needs of postpartum mothers in socioeconomically vulnerable groups?

Jump to Research Section

03 / Final Solution Overview

We designed a holistic health app that helps postpartum mothers navigate emotional challenges, access community support, and make informed decisions through culturally grounded guidance.

Meadow offers three flows that are designed to meet postpartum mothers where they are. It includes a guided check-in that encourages emotional awareness, a story-sharing space that fosters community connection, a partner integration tool for task delegation and support, and a virtual doula offering personalized, culturally relevant guidance. Together, these features address critical gaps in traditional postpartum support systems while honoring the lived experiences of low SES and minoritized mothers.

Mood Flow

Feature 1: Mindful Check-in

Problem Addressed: The "superwoman persona" framework affecting Black women from low SES backgrounds, characterized by perceived obligations to project strength, resist vulnerability, and succeed despite limited resources, leading to under-utilization of mental health services.

Solution: A guided check-in that enables users to identify patterns in their thinking and pinpoint what is causing negative or positive stimuli. Users indicate their general feeling, specify the particular emotions, and respond to contextual reflection prompts.

Key Impact: Facilitates deeper emotional self-awareness and pattern recognition to support mental health advocacy.

Feature 2: Community Sharing

Problem Addressed: Social isolation and lack of emotional support during vulnerable postpartum periods, particularly among underserved communities.

Solution: A story-sharing feature where users' written experiences transform into interactive dandelion visualizations, creating a digital community garden that serves as a safe space for mutual connection.

Key Impact: Fosters belonging and emotional reassurance through shared experiences and peer support.

Task Flow

Core Feature: Delegation & Partner Integration

Problem Addressed: Difficulty requesting help during postpartum recovery due to isolation, vulnerability, and varying comfort levels with asking for support, despite family and friends wanting to help but not knowing how.

Solution: A partner integration system that allows users to create "wishes," aka delegated tasks, with automated suggestions for additional support actions and facilitated communication options.

Key Impact: Reduces barriers to help-seeking through low-effort, actionable support requests and enhanced collaboration.

Doula Flow

Core Feature: Knowledge Base & Conversational Assistant

Problem Addressed: Limited access to culturally relevant doula care among low-income, diverse women, despite research showing significantly better health outcomes when doula support is available.

Solution: A conversational assistant and knowledge base offering verified postpartum wellness articles and personalized guidance through an accessible virtual doula character.

Key Impact: Democratizes access to doula expertise and promotes self-advocacy through culturally centered, evidence-based support.

04 / Research Methodology

We conducted a literature review, qualitative data analysis, competitive analysis, and expert interviews to explore the broader problem space and to build a contextual understanding of our users' needs.

1. Literature Review

To understand our problem space, we reviewed 60+ academic papers and synthesized our findings into 5 main themes:

Socioeconomic Status as a Determinant of Health
Support Systems as a Health Factor
Population Specific Considerations
Existing mHealth Applications
Culturally Competent Research and Design

We synthesized our research into 5 main themes after reviewing 60+ academic papers:

Socioeconomic Status as a Determinant of Health
Support Systems as a Health Factor
Population Specific Considerations
Existing mHealth Applications
Culturally Competent Research and Design

2. Qualitative Data Analysis

To gain insight into the lived experiences of postpartum mothers beyond academic literature, we analyzed both primary and secondary accounts shared on Reddit. Using an inductive coding approach, we identified the recurring themes:

Importance of a Doula
Willingness to Ask for Support
Need for Self-Advocacy
Personal Advice

3. Competitive Analysis

We evaluated existing products by analyzing their core features, business models, cultural responsiveness, and how well they addressed the needs of their target users.

By doing so, we were able to pinpoint gaps in current solutions and identify opportunities to deliver holistic, culturally relevant, and accessible support for postpartum mothers from low-income and marginalized communities.

Along with our analysis of digital products, we also researched physical resources in Atlanta (e.g., support groups and educational programs) by reaching out to local organizations. This helped us understand the broader ecosystem of postpartum care for our target users.

4. Expert Interviews

For our last research method, we conducted 2 semi-structured interviews with 3 subject matter experts to bridge our research findings with expert knowledge. These interviews helped us better understand how to design effective behavioral health interventions, conduct informed and inclusive user research, and identify effective features and engagement opportunities for our solution.

We spoke with two clinician-researchers at a major Atlanta hospital, and a psychologist who leads a digital health startup focused on pediatric mental health in low-SES populations. Our goal was to understand how technology can be leveraged to support mental and physical wellness, and how to design for vulnerable populations while accounting for cultural nuance, medical mistrust, and practical constraints. We gained several critical insights:

Design must be informed by cultural relevancy and lived experience

Medical mistrust and mutual beneficence should be considered

Language and framing matter

Technology should enhance, not replace, human providers

05 / Research Synthesis & Design Ideation

We synthesized our findings to uncover user needs and motivations, translated them into design requirements, and outlined design implications to guide our direction. From there, we explored initial concepts through ideation activities, which shaped the four flows of our final solution.

1. User Needs & Motivations

To ground our findings, we developed a user persona that synthesized key insights from our research. Our persona, Angela, captures the challenges of low-income postpartum mothers from minoritized backgrounds: balancing childcare with financial and emotional strain, limited access to affordable healthcare, and the burden of resilience while facing systemic challenges.

By mapping out the users' goals, values, and challenges, we identified core needs and motivations that anchored our decisions and shaped our design approach.

2. Summary of Findings & Design Requirements

Building upon our persona's pain points and motivations, we distilled our research findings into actionable design requirements.

Our research communicated the following three main user needs and motivations: encourage self-advocacy through awareness and communication, increase access to personalized and actionable health information, and lessen mental load and parenting burdens through support and guidance.

Clarifying the design requirements helped us establish concrete guidelines to ensure our decisions stayed grounded in user needs.

Building upon our persona's pain points and motivations, we distilled our research findings into actionable design requirements.

Clarifying the design requirements helped us establish concrete guidelines to ensure our decisions stayed grounded in user needs.

Building upon our persona's pain points and motivations, we distilled our research findings into actionable design requirements.

Clarifying the design requirements helped us establish concrete guidelines to ensure our decisions stayed grounded in user needs.

Building upon our persona's pain points and motivations, we distilled our research findings into actionable design requirements.

Clarifying the design requirements helped us establish concrete guidelines to ensure our decisions stayed grounded in user needs.

3. Ideation Activities

With the design requirements as a foundation, we began ideating possible solutions. First, we conducted two brainstorming sessions, then voted as a team on which directions to prioritize to formulate our design implications. Then, we conducted rounds of Crazy 8s to rapidly generate feature ideas that expanded upon and corresponded to our design implications.

We evaluated concepts for feasibility, alignment with user needs, and potential for long-term engagement, ultimately narrowing down to those with the strongest potential to fill critical gaps in postpartum support.

This process helped us balance both practical, task-oriented tools and more expressive, community-driven features.

With the design requirements as a foundation, we began ideating possible solutions. First, we brainstormed general ideas and themes for our solution, then voted as a team on which directions to prioritize to formulate our design implications. Then, we conducted rounds of Crazy 8s to rapidly generate a wide range of ideas for features that expanded upon and connected our design implications.

This process helped us balance both practical, task-oriented tools and more expressive, community-driven features.

With the design requirements as a foundation, we began ideating possible solutions. First, we brainstormed design implications linked to each requirement, then conducted rounds of Crazy 8s to rapidly generate a wide range of ideas for features that expanded upon and connected our design implications.

This process helped us balance both practical, task-oriented tools and more expressive, community-driven features.

4. Design Implications

To support self-advocacy, we focused on features that help mothers recognize and reframe negative thought patterns while making it easier to ask for help. Mood tracking, guided reflection, and low-effort support requests became key strategies for empowering users to take ownership of their wellness.

To improve access to personalized health information, we introduced a virtual doula offering culturally grounded guidance alongside a knowledge hub of credible resources. In addition to professional advice, the platform includes tips from other mothers to provide reassurance through shared lived experiences.

To lessen users' mental load and parenting burdens, we emphasized tools for task breakdown, management, and delegation. Alongside these practical supports that allow users to ask for help from their support system, we also introduced a shared space for mothers to express themselves and connect with others, reinforcing that they're not alone in their journey.

Together, these implications directly shaped the design of our four flows, and helped us ensure that our solutions stayed rooted in the realities of postpartum mothers.