Pregnancy apps support millions of women through one of life's most vulnerable seasons, yet many prioritize business goals over user needs through sign-up barriers, intrusive ads, opaque data practices, and fragmented experiences. As lead UX researcher, I conducted a mixed-methods study, gathering quantitative data from 59 pregnant women through an online survey and qualitative data through an online co-design case study involving four pregnant women and one gynecologist. The research explored women's perceptions of pregnancy app design, information credibility, utility, and the challenges they encounter when using these apps. These insights informed a redesigned experience centered on trust, usefulness, and a more holistic pregnancy journey.
Pregnancy apps are often a first stop for reassurance — sometimes the main source of guidance when structured prenatal care is hard to reach. That makes them powerful, and it raises the bar for how they should treat the people who use them.
The market leaders are free, ad-supported, and owned by large media companies. Their revenue depends on attention and data, which sets up a quiet conflict: the user needs a calm, private, trustworthy companion, while the product is incentivised to capture, monetise, and retain. This case study examines where that conflict surfaces in the interface — and how design can resolve it without breaking the business.
I used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design: quantitative first to find the patterns, qualitative second to understand them — closing with co-design so women shaped the solutions, not just described the problems.
A structured survey measured how women use pregnancy apps and where they break down.
An online co-design case study with four pregnant women and one gynecologist unpacked the "why" behind the survey patterns.
Participants helped envision better solutions, grounding the redesign in lived experience.
I mapped recurring frustrations to Nielsen's usability heuristics to prioritise by severity.
Across the survey and case studies, women described unexpected app behaviour, sign-up walls, slow loading, intrusive ads, incomplete tracking, and insufficient information. Mapped to Nielsen's usability heuristics, four issues stood out — rated below by severity.
Core week-by-week content is locked behind account creation, with no option to browse as a guest. The wall lands at the exact moment a user came for reassurance.
Heuristic: user control & freedomReporting describes sign-up passing a user's email to third-party advertisers, triggering immediate marketing spam — with no clear, upfront consent.
Heuristic: consent & transparencyReviewers describe ads sitting inside the content flow with small close targets, making accidental taps and unwanted redirects easy — and losing their place.
Heuristic: error preventionUsers report being unable to proceed without logging a pregnancy status, with no graceful, supportive way to handle a loss. A usability gap becomes real harm.
Heuristic: emotional safetyThe clearest pattern in the data: no single pregnancy app provided all the features women needed, so many juggled several apps at once to manage one pregnancy. And the friction within each app shared one root — the monetisation model winning over the user's need for a private, calm, trustworthy companion.
Women were stitching together a holistic pregnancy experience the apps refused to provide — while each app's business model showed through at their most vulnerable moment.
That reframing changed the brief. The goal wasn't to polish individual screens — it was to prove a pregnancy app could support a more holistic journey and stay viable while putting the user's wellbeing first. Each redesign below keeps a clear path to sign-up and retention, but removes the coercion.
A welcome screen leads with "Continue as guest," with account creation offered as an equal second choice. Users can experience the value first; sign-up is invited, never forced — and progress can be saved later.
Earn the sign-up; don't demand it.
Marketing and data-sharing are separate, plainly-worded toggles — sharing off by default — with the reassurance "we never sell your data" placed right where the decision happens, not buried in fine print.
Consent is a choice, not a checkbox you hide.
The home screen drops in-flow advertising for a calm, single-focus week tracker. The model shifts toward an honest premium tier rather than renting the user's attention to advertisers mid-task.
Calm is a feature, not an upsell.
Updating a journey offers a clear "I experienced a loss" path that never demands a status log, never says "congratulations," and leads with an apology, an offer of support, and a way to pause the app entirely.
Design for the worst day, not just the happy path.
Grounded in the study, each change protects the user while keeping a realistic path to revenue and retention — and points toward the bigger recommendation: a more holistic pregnancy experience, supported by integrating these apps into clinical care.
Guest access removes the wall without removing the sign-up path.
Honest, opt-in defaults reduce the risk of unwanted data sharing.
An ad-free flow eliminates the mis-tap and redirect frustration.
A loss-aware flow turns a harmful gap into a moment of support.
Beyond individual fixes, the study points to two shifts: pregnancy apps should support a more holistic pregnancy experience rather than forcing women to juggle several, and health apps should be integrated into gynecological practice — improving maternal health outcomes and patients' adherence to their care plans. The natural next step is moderated usability testing and a diary study to validate the redesigned flows with women who have used these apps, including those who experienced a loss.