Giving Birth Together
Mobile App| UX\UI
Preparation of a childbirth mobile app for both mothers-to-be and their birth companions based on the HypnoBirthing method. This method puts emphasizes self-relaxation techniques, breathing techniques for labor and birthing, hypnotic relaxation, and visualization, and also educates the birth companion’s role in birthing and preparing the women's body for birthing with yoga training and healthy nutrition to achieve peaceful, calm, gentle, and safe delivery.
Giving Birth Together app was born due to my personal need for a convenient and available platform where you can practice the exercises learned in this method anywhere and anytime, an app that gives you a daily picture in terms of personal as a mother-to-be and her birth companion progress together in preparation for childbirth and emphasizes the birth companion involvement.
Academic project
Here is the link for the landing page for the app:
How it all started (my story)
It all started when I was on my pregnancy the fifth month, one day I started to feel really strong pains in my lower abdomen. The pains felt like contractions and I found myself difficult to breathe. The reason for the pains was myoma in my uterus. Since that day I started to fear labor and the contractions that come with it.
A good friend of mine told me about the Hypnobirthing method and the preparation she and her husband did toward their first childbirth. Few weeks after that, my husband and I joined a labor preparation course based on this method, and my main goal was to trust my body, not to fear labor, and easily breathe when the real contractions will come.
Challenge
Most of us grew up knowing that childbirth is a scary, painful, and dramatic event. Back in our childhood/adolescence, we heard the story of our birth from our mother. Even in the bible in the book of Genesis - Hava's punishment: "Sadly you will give birth to sons ...". Therefore, many women come to childbirth with very great fear and anxiety and they fail to cope well with labor and pain which in many cases leads to medical interventions and complications and a negative and even traumatic general experience and a sense of failure.
The "normal" childbirth preparation courses (health insurance funds, hospitals) do not place enough emphasis on the mental preparation for childbirth and do not sufficiently emphasize how the effect of fear may adversely affect the birth and the experience of the mother. Even those who do enroll in private preparation courses and are aware of the subject and Hypnobirthing method, there are currently no convenient and accessible digital solutions that complement the accompaniment of the mother in preparation for childbirth.
Solution
Giving Birth Together app - is a preparation app for a soft and fearless birth intended for both the mother and her birth companions. The app will provide a solution for women who want to have a softer and more peaceful birth and of course for their birth attendants, it will accompany them personally during pregnancy and help them prepare mentally and physically for the significant event in their lives.
Research
My research was among pregnant women on Facebook groups, and shows that most women are interested in preparing for childbirth, especially if it is the first birth, but not necessarily with a clear agenda, they usually enroll in the regular courses of the health insurance fund/hospital.
It seems that most women who choose to take a childbirth preparation course through this method for the first birth, and it is important to them that their partner or other birth attendant be active and supportive of the birth itself (and the preparation process itself). With regard to the women who are not their first child, enroll in the course and undergo this preparation for the reason that they had a difficult and traumatic experience in previous births and they want to go through a corrective experience.
Persona
At the beginning of Naama's pregnancy, she was sure that one did not have to prepare for the birth, after all, they all give birth eventually one way or another. But as the pregnancy progressed she had questions, curiosity, anxiety, and fear towards the birth - thoughts of what will be and how it will be. It is very important for her to come ready for childbirth, and she thinks that proper preparation is very important for a first birth.
Flow chart
The interface is designed and engineered so that it is clear and convenient how to navigate the app, and get to the daily exercises and track the progress of both the mother and the birth companion.
The app synchronizes between the mother and the birth companion by registering the birth companion and entering the sharing code at the end of the mother's registration, updating them in real-time, and reminding them to perform exercises.
Wireframes
After downloading the app, the mother registers, after which a sharing code is sent to the birth companion. On the home page are all the recommended exercises for practice: guided stretching and relaxation, breathing techniques, exercises for the mother with her birth companion, empowering sentences, body maintenance (yoga exercises and nutrition articles), and birth stories.
The app's assignments renewed daily and weakly so reminders and notifications are available for the users.
App design
The app's design is based on an inspiration board from the world of Hypnobirthing images: a hot air balloon appears in the guided imagery as a work exercise on fears, a flower stimulates the vagina and birth canal opening in the baby's passage out into the world, breathing techniques imagine a large balloon being filled with air.
Clouds and sky, sea - everything from the world of calm, relaxation, and guided imagery.
The colors in the app are delicate and calm pastel colors that reflect the essence of the method.
Inspiration board
I used pictures of these images as well as pictures of my husband and I's personal pregnancy album and turned them into illustrations:
The app screens
Try me! Ticlick my tommy:
The registration process:
First, the mother-to-be registers: enters her personal information, estimated date of birth, sex of the fetus, and the details of her birth companion. At the end of the process, a sharing code is sent to the birth companion's phone number. When the birth companion enters the code when registering for the application, the application knows how to associate him/her with the mother and thus synchronize between the two when using it.
Home page and practices page:
On the home page, you can see all the practices, both personal (only for the mother) and couple (for the mother and her birth companion). When a practice is performed, it should be marked "I did" and then the practice tracking page is automatically updated, for both users.
Branding
From the design, I made a mockup of ancillary products that include mockups of regular pillows, maternity pillows as well as bags that are always useful.
These are designed bookmarks. I chose bookmarks because the hypnobirthing method can be read extensively in Marie P. Mongen's book:
In addition, a key part of the process of preparing for childbirth with this method is empowering sentences, in which the mother can write for herself the sentences she most connects to, or even compose herself. These are branded cards on which the mother can write the sentences, and during the birth itself, she can hang them in front of her and get stronger from them.
