Mila: Improving the UX for a pregnancy support mobile app
Duration: 3 months, over the summer of 2025
Team: Manuela Odell, product designer; Lindsey Snyder, founder & project manager
Overview
Two years ago, I worked as a design mentor for Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood, the venture studio for scaling innovations to solve the most pressing social challenges. They have worked with over 64 companies, have helped 5M+ Americans, and raised over $200M. Although I don’t work for them currently, I am still a big supporter of their mission and help with design work when called.
I met Lindsey Snyder who was working on Mila, an app that was digitizing the doula relationship for expecting mothers and post-partum mothers. The idea was to provide education to expecting mothers so that they could develop knowledge-based birth plans. I really loved the idea and her passion and we decided to work together.
The Challenge
Lindsey needed some UX help for three of the main flows:
Home: with gamification, and navigation to navigate the app
Learn: an article & quiz component that makes up the core functionality
Plan: a product in which expecting mothers can add their desire plans in detail to provide to their birth doctor.
Lindsey had designed the app herself but she wasn’t a designer and was struggling to figure out exactly what the problem was with each flow. They were not “clicking” with her and the users but feedback had been pretty vague and disorganized. She needed help figuring out what to change but had a short period of time and budget. She had engineering interns for the summer and wanted to take advantage of their time.
The Approach
Since time was tight and we wanted to ship in a quick turnaround, I decided to do quick user feedback but mostly rely on the feedback that was already conducted by Lindsey. Using that feedback, inspiration from other popular “productivity” and EdTech apps, I believed that we could get a really great MVP up and running.
Lindsey and I met on a weekly basis for her to provide me feedback and share other things she was thinking about. This allowed me to move fast and get feedback in real-time. A lot of people would not like this approach but I felt that it was best when trying to move fast.
Home Screen Flows
The home screen flow is where everything begins. It is a dynamic to-do list of important articles, appointments, information, and decision that an expecting mother needs to make.
Original wireframes:
In early exploration, instead of relying on icons on the homepage and tab navigation, I played around with the idea of a floating action button that could have pathways to different features, like the AI (Ask Mila - an AI agent to help expecting mothers), and the journal feature, which allows mothers to journal how they are feeling.
Before:
appointments & tasks were all mixed in
no strong hierarchy with tasks
never-ending list of tasks when scrolling
journal button was the icon on the top left
Feedback:
Users felt overwhelmed by the never-ending list of tasks. They also cited that it was unclear what they needed to do.
After:
Separated tasks & appointments to allow a better hierarchal system of what a user should do that day or upcoming
added color tags
created additional buttons at the top for other main actions a user can take
created a “whats new in my pregnancy” button that took users
Created some simple UI color and design changes to give the experience a facelift
Using tabs and segmented controls on different screens, allowed content to be condenses in clearer ways
Outcome:
Users understood exactly what they needed to do and when. Colored tags helped orient them and created a visual language to understand the task at hand; Users found themselves more curious about the different features and spent more time exploring the app. Users were very happy with the visual UI changes. They felt the app was cleaner & more organized.
Updated Wireframes
Learn flows
For the most part, the learning section of the app was pretty optimized for success. There were two entries into the learning flow. The first was the main Learn tab that had a search with tags and a library of articles. Tapping into one of the articles sent a user into a lesson flow where they could move through a lesson with quizzes. Users could also arrive at a lesson through the home screen, where the algorithm would provide them a relevant lesson. Additionally some lessons had a question section where users could answer what preference they had which would be added to their birth plan.
Original wireframes
Before:
Filter & Search had not been thought out thoroughly.
Learn flow was using sheets
No consistent color system
Little UI nits, like heavy shadows, unclear usage of icons
Feedback:
Unclear what filters or tags related to which article. Unclear what “skip to preference” means. Skip to preference pulled up a sheet over the sheet which is not a good UI experience. Not particularly engaging. Users wanted to see which articles had already been read.
After:
Cleaned up filter flow
Create better UX around buttons on learn flows, adding a back button.
Originally the flow was using sheets for each lesson. This created issues when there was a second level of decision making to be made. I made lessons full screens, and then when a user selected the button “I have already read this and would like to skip to preferences”, this pulled up a sheet so that the user could focus on the task and dismiss easily.
Added a “want to read” and “read” tagging system
Cleaner UI
Outcome:
Learn flows infrastructure was much cleaner and easier to understand. With more time, I would have liked to change the design of the actual lessons, found better illustrations, and create a more interesting information format, however, we decided to just focus on general UI and UX clean up initially.
Updated wireframes
Birth Plan Flows
The lessons and the quizzes in the learn flow all lead to a birth plan, which is a plan written by a pregnant woman that sets out in advance her preferences for labor, such as choice of birth setting and methods of pain relief.
The birth plan pulled data from the answers in the learning flows.
Before - original wireframes
Before:
Busy interface with unclear hierarchy
Poor tab UI
Unclear user action
Feedback:
Users felt overwhelmed by how much they had to do or fill out on this. They mostly said that this didn’t feel like a professional app.
After:
Cleaned up hierarchy to make it clearer what the user action is
Created an expand/collapse system to hide information
Used icons to improve aesthetic
General UI updates
Outcome:
Users were much clearer on the action to take. They thought the design was a huge improvement from before. They could easily update, share, and download the birth plan.
Additional Designs
Ask Mila - AI Chatbot & journal entries
In addition to the main three flows, I was asked to create designs for an AI chatbot and a journal entry library and flow
Wins & Learnings
This was a really wonderful project with a lot of creative liberty, despite time restrictions. It was so important to really dive deep into the psychology of an expecting mother, a beautiful but sensitive time filled with a lot of anxiety. Creating a product that delivered a sense of calm, reassurance, and emotional connection became the central goal. Every design decision — from color palette and tone of voice to interaction patterns — was rooted in empathy and sensitivity. We wanted users to feel guided, supported, and understood, transforming what could be an overwhelming experience into one of trust, clarity, and warmth.
Since relaunching the app, Lindsey has shared that feedback has been very positive. Personally, I see so many issues with the product and things I’d love to change had their been more time. But I have no doubt that in the right time, I’ll work again with Mila!