Beyond Baby Blues: Strengthening Support for New Mothers
Helping families provide better postpartum support
TEAM AND MY ROLE
As a UX researcher and designer, I was involved in primary and secondary research, ideation, prototyping, and evaluation. My key responsibilities included conducting interviews, synthesizing insights, designing the solution, and iterating based on usability testing feedback.
WHAT I DID
I conducted exploratory research through a literature review and competitive benchmarking, followed by user interviews with new mothers and their support systems to identify key pain points and design opportunities. I also led wireframing, prototyping, evaluation and refining interactions based on user feedback.
TOOLS
timeline
December - January 2024
SKILLS USED
Desk research, interviews, feature benchmarking, wireframing, prototyping, information architecture, heuristic evaluation, usability testing, ethics evaluation
PROBLEM
Lack of support from family and friends can cause stress, anxiety, and career setbacks after having a baby.
Many new mothers experience emotional isolation as they navigate lifestyle changes, physical recovery, and societal expectations. While family members and friends want to help, they often struggle to understand how, leading to miscommunication and unmet needs. Returning to work adds challenges like discrimination, rigid schedules, and self-doubt, making the transition even more overwhelming.
SOLUTION
A connect care system that tracks a new mother’s health indicators and provides personalized recommendations to her support system.
How BloomWell works
Mother wears a smart device that monitors her emotional and physiological state.
Support system receives actionable guidance on how they should assist for things like stress reduction activities, baby care tips and more.
App provides real-time updates to the support system (partner, family or friends) on her well-being.
Journaling & Community Support - Mothers can document their emotions to reflect on their feelings and connect with others in similar situations.
RESEARCH
Understanding the Journey: Supporting New Mothers Beyond Birth
a. The Challenge: Postpartum and Career Re-entry Struggles
Becoming a mother is a life-altering experience, but what happens after birth is often overlooked. Many new mothers face postpartum stress, emotional turbulence, and the daunting challenge of returning to work. Through exploratory desk research, including academic papers and expert articles, we uncovered striking statistics:
Existing platforms like Mom Relaunch and The Mom Project provide career re-entry resources, but none specifically address the emotional and psychological support mothers need.
b. Voices from the Experience: What Mothers and Partners Told Us
To move beyond statistics and learn what happens at the ground level we conducted semi structured interviews with 6 new mothers and 3 partners. Their stories echoed a common theme:
Mothers felt unsupported
While partners and family wanted to help, they didn’t know how.
Stress & guilt were common
Mothers constantly battled the tension between caregiving and career aspirations.
Lack of structured support
Partners felt that there’s no clear framework to guide them on effective caregiving.
One important quote that stuck with us-
I know my husband wants to help, but he just doesn’t know how. If there was a way to tell him what I needed without me always having to explain, that would be amazing.
CHANGING OUR FOCUS
From Career Re-entry to Empowering the Support System
Initially, our research focused on helping mothers return to work. However, our interviews revealed a deeper issue—the level of support a mother receives significantly impacts her mental health and ability to reintegrate into the workforce.
How might we design a technological intervention for a mother’s support system (partners, family, friends) to create an environment where she can heal emotionally and physically?
FINAL SOLUTION
Turning Care into Action with Smart Support
To explore potential solutions, we conducted a Crazy 8s brainstorming session, generating a diverse range of concepts focused on supporting new mothers. After refining our ideas, we conducted usability testing with mothers and partners to evaluate feasibility and impact. Additionally, we applied a Digital Ethics Compass Evaluation to ensure that our solution prioritizes user autonomy, privacy, and well-being. These iterative processes led us to our final concept—a wearable and mobile app designed to empower support systems in providing meaningful care.
During onboarding, the mother can input her details and add key support members. She controls what data to share, customizing the insight her support system receives for privacy and autonomy.
The support system can access the mother’s health insights through their app, viewing a side-by-side comparison of her stress levels alongside their own, both tracked by smart rings.
A microneedle patch monitors cortisol levels to detect stress in real time. By establishing a personalized baseline, it offers actionable insights for timely support, ensuring mothers receive the care they need.
The system includes a Baby Guide and Mother’s Well-Being Hub to support mothers and children effectively, based on feedback from mothers. This helps partners and family provide informed, meaningful support.
REFLECTION
Key learnings and ethical considerations
User Autonomy & Data Privacy
While tracking stress levels can enhance support it also raises ethical concerns about data ownership and consent. Empowering mothers to control their shared information ensures privacy rather than surveillance. Future developments could refine data-sharing preferences while providing anonymized insights to balance support and privacy.
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Avoiding Emotional Harm
Displaying stress metrics can be helpful but also triggering for mothers. Without proper framing, it might increase anxiety rather than reduce it. To mitigate this, the app integrates CBT-based recommendations and community support, but additional research is needed to explore how to present stress data in a reassuring, non-alarming way.
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Encouraging Active Support
The app assumes the support system is willing to help, but engagement may vary. Gamification, nudges, or incentives could ensure caregivers actively participate, preventing the mother from bearing the sole responsibility of seeking support.
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Interested in what you see? Let's collaborate and explore how I can bring your vision to life with thoughtful, human centered design
Made with coffee and love by Apoorvaa Balasundaram
