ExpectED

ExpectED is a wellness app designed for college students who are working towards their education while being pregnant. The app provides resources that are tailored to users based on their respective university. I partnered with four fellow Purdue students from various majors as part of our final project for our “Designing Technology for People” course.

  • January - April 2023

  • UX Researcher and Wireframe Designer

  • Allie Foster, Lily Archer, Andrew Lasecki, and Jenny Tang

Problem Statement

“Pregnant students receive inadequate support from their peers and community, leading to negative impacts on their success and overall well-being.”

Research

The ethnographic process

During our ethnographic research phase, we conducted fieldwork by observing pregnant college students that documented their respective journeys via social media, more specifically, their Youtube channels. Common pain points from our findings included the following:

  • Bodily changes leading to new daily inconveniences and struggles

  • Education uncertainty in terms of completing it

  • Financial concerns with school and lifestyle

  • Lack of support from friends, family, and school-affiliated individuals

Fieldnote Evidence

In addition to pregnant students, we also interviewed individuals with expertise in this issue, ranging from nursing students to anthropology professors who specialize in women’s health and wellness.

“The support (for pregnant women) varied a ton. Some patients I saw had their partner there the whole time. And there was another situation where the mom gave birth and the dad barely cared. So it varied from the most supportive to incredibly unsupportive.”

- Purdue Nursing Student with OB experience

“When it comes to financial planning, there are certain resources that universities do their best in order to accommodate pregnant individuals. However there are definitely other resources that can be established.”

- Purdue Anthropology Professor

“Stress is a key factor. It would depend on how the parent felt about their pregnancy, support system, and resources. If there were financial concerns, it would be very stressful, and cause the parent’s body to divert biological energy in on-optimal ways.”

- Purdue Anthropology Professor

Our Criteria

As we reviewed our research and pain points, our group wanted to create a solution that met the following categories in a criteria that we designed based on our findings.

Accessibility

Solution is easily accessible to users across their devices.

Wellness

Addresses the users’ physical and mental well-being, providing the necessary resources.

Fulfillment

Solution resources are effective to the user’s journey to complete their education.

Functionality

Solution is cohesive, understandable, and user-friendly.

Design

Mapping the experience

As we began the app development process, I sketched wireframes of our interfaces to understand user flow and visualize how our screens could potentially look.

Mockups

Using the wireframe sketches as a reference, we created digital mockups of our interfaces to explore layout ideas that are ideal for our user group. We wanted to have our dashboard incorporate the feedback we received from our fieldwork, such as. nutritional planning, fitness plans, and on-campus support resources.

The Solution

After reviewing our mockups, we designed our final prototype with the following functions that meet the needs of our user group:

User Profile

Profile provides credentials, such as user’s name, school, email, year, and trimester.

Dashboard

Users are directed to a dashboard that provides four main features: Nutrition, Academics, Fitness, and the In-App Shop. From there, users can tap on any of those sources to be redirected to that specific information.

Nutrition

ExpectED’s nutrition guide provides a guideline of university-based resources, such as dining options, nutritional planning/counseling, and more.

Fitness

The fitness page provides recreational resources on campus for users to have access to exercise and wellness programs in order to stay active.

Academic Support

The academic support page provides networking resources on campus to connect with trained professionals that can guide users throughout their pregnancy journey.

Reflection

Looking back

It was a profound experience working with others from various academic majors with their own unique skills. Going into the research process, I didn’t have a lot of prior knowledge on this user group. I learned a lot about not only the physical and health implications, but also the challenges of trying to balance an education while being pregnant. More specifically, the financial planning and taking care of one’s mental health and well-being.

With the guidance of one of my group members, who studies visual communication design, I was able to learn about wireframing and user interface design to successfully create a wireframe process that was used to catalyze the vision for the final designs. My group’s process was a pivotal moment in my design journey and has greatly influenced how I approach current projects and how I plan to approach future work. This project served as a catalyst for me to pursue UI/UX design, and to connect creativity and research to find solutions for people of various backgrounds.