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A pregnancy tracker with social networking.
Background
CareTicker aimed to improve on existing pregnancy apps like Flo by addressing key gaps. While competitors excelled at daily guidance and health tracking, they lacked robust communication features and local resources.
Our team envisioned CareTicker as both a tracker and communications hub to keep family and friends informed. We also wanted to help users find nearby gynecologists, hospitals, and classes - something other apps overlooked. Additionally, we aimed to offer the app without a subscription fee. After researching demand for these features, I led the implementation.
My Roles
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Product Designer
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Researcher
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Visual Designer
Deliverables
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Wireframes
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Visual Designs
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Interactive Prototypes
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UX Research
Tools
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Figma
Problems
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Pregnancy can be a daunting and overwhelming process. How can we take stress out of the journey?
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How can we organize vast amounts of information and scheduling into an easy to digest experience?
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It's difficult to notify your family and friends about milestones during preganancy. Does this feature add value? If so, how can we implement it?
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Finding specialists and resources can be a frustrating process. How can we leverage the app to make the process easier?
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Can the app be supported without the subscription fees used by other pregnancy applications?
Solutions
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Guide the user with tips and context sensitive articles that vary day to day, week to week, and trimester to trimester. In addition, like other apps, help the user track their health stats.
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Create an easy use social networking app that notifies groups from friends and family, about key milestones via text messaging similar to the way Uber updates vehicle status.
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Find specialists, facilities and classes, based on the mother's location. Make it possible to schedule appointments in one to two taps. Also let the user know if these resources are covered by their insurance plan, and if so, help them opt in.
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Support a subscription free model by serving up context sensitive ads for products.
Research
Meet our target user.
Interviewing a group of five women in different stages of pregnancy, I was able to create a target user that distilled what they want in an ideal tracking app.
As part of the design process, I distributed personas and user journeys, of our target users to Management and Dev. As the team rolled out new features, I wanted them to look at the persona and user journey to ask questions like,
"How would Julie manage different aspects of her pregnancy?"
Visual Design
Flow Diagrams
Before mocking up CareTicker, I worked on the information architecture for the app. This helped the Dev team not only see the number of screens expected, but also how data would flow.
Preliminary Sketches
Wireframes
Created in Figma, this diagram shows maps microinteractions to screens in the app.
Interaction Designs
Messaging
While most pregnancy trackers had message boards, they didn't take advantage of the immediacy of messaging. I started out trying to mock up what a messaging session might look like.
Here we see a messaging page from within CareTicker. It includes a list of people to get the message. Users can select from either family or friends. They can also set who can read the message as some announcements may be more private than others.
Image: Messaging UI in App
Image: Recipients see messages in their texting inbox.
Find a Specialist
Most pregnancy apps are great at providing recording health stats and articles. While compelling and informative, these apps leave users in a lurch. Articles inform them of what they need to do or who they need to see, but they don't help them get there.
CareTicker takes the next step. During setup, the mother to be enters their home address. Then when the time comes to visit different services, the app provides a list of specialists, classes, stores and facilities
based on need and location.
Need to find a gynecologist in your area? No problem. CareTicker will list doctors within a 10, 25 or 50 mile radius. In addition, users can filter by patient reviews / ratings, as well as what insurance plans providers accept.
Lastly, once the user finds a specialist they like, they can either tap to set up an appointment online, or give the specialist a call for more detailed needs.
Image: Locator Map
Image: Additional Map Filters
No Subscriptions - Using Ads
While a subscription model is standard in the field, Business wanted to attract users by not charging for use.
Several ideas were discussed including: "Try before you buy." After running some revenue models, the team determined that after the first year or so, in-app ads, could cover overhead.
I was tasked with creating some context sensitive ads and ran through a few iterations. Some were plain text, similar to google Adwords, others were more visual. One version included a pop-up.
Image: Text Based Advert
Image: Visual Advert
Image: Pop-Up
Screen Design Variations
Screen designs went through several rounds of revision based on user feedback. Designs moved from a green to a pink palate, with larger buttons for easier interactions. Five users found the green treatment too offputting and clinical. They expected something more playful.
Four users found the pink UI to be more user friendly and welcoming.
Image: Green Palate
Image: Pink Palate
User Testing
Overview
For testing, we selected six women who were either mothers or newly expectant mothers. All of them had used a smart phone, either iPhone or Android, for at least three years.
Our goal was to test core functionality such as onboarding and conducting a journey through pregancy.
In addition we tested features unique to CareTicker.
Testing was conducted with interactive prototypes and focused on some basic goals.
Acting on Test Findings
Find Service Maps:
I would work to improve the vertical spacing on cards on the maps screen, to reduce density, give the text room to breathe and make items in the card easier for users to pick out at a glance.
Advertising
While I would emphasize visual ads, we should test all three for a few months to determine empirically which ad design has the best click through rate. From there we can choose the winning ad design for our revenue strategy.
Final Designs
Image: Splash Screen
Image: Checklists
Image: Messaging
Image: Account Setup
Image: Calendar
Image: Map (Find Resources)_
Image: Context Sensitive Landing
Image: Contacts
Image: Inline Advertising
Next Steps
We came to the CareTicker project with the hopes of meeting a few needs that our team found lacking in the pregnancy app space. We think the initial launch was promising but there are still a lot of rough edges we'd like to refine for subsequent releases.
Maps
The locator Map page brings some long missing functionality to pregnancy apps. We were pretty happy with the maps integration as well as folding in such bells and whistles as selecting by insurance carrier and language. With additional user research, we hope to find out what other features expectant mothers would like to view in map form.
While the map is feature rich, it was built in haste. It needs to follow the color palate of the rest of app better. People found it easy to use, but visually it's still the odd page out. The better integrated the map container is, the more uniform, polished, and welcoming the app will seem to users as a whole.
Messaging
The messaging feature was designed for high contrast, to be easy to read. I'll spend more time however, skinning the container with colors the better match the app's overall pink palate and Lottie animation style.
Ad-Tech
We will run analytics on our ads to see which model gets the most clicks. I have a feeling, the visual ads that are part of the page's feed will win out.
Community and Feedback
Forums are a valuable asset on other pregancy apps. They foster community, help and mentoring. We plan to put forums into a later version of the app.
I'd also like to add subtle links for feedback, not just for features, but also articles. We want to know if our editorial content is bringing new insights to our users. If not, where we can improve?
Thank You
Copyright © 2025 - Joe Wahrhaftig, All rights reserved
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