Designing the Health Tech of the future with AI and smart environments
Harnessing AI, smart sensors, and connected environments to support holistic post-partum care
Role + Team
Mobile App Design lead;
7 designers, 4 researchers,
2 PMs, 20 engineers
Timeline
4 months,
January - May 2025
Client
Honda's Research Institute, 99P Labs x Carnegie Mellon University
Essential Question
How might we design a wellness ecosystem using environmental and bodily sensor data?
Fourth Trimester Health is a holistic wellness platform built for post-partum mothers on behalf of Honda's 99P Research Labs.
I collaborated with 30 teammates across hardware engineering, intelligence engineering, and HCI to build a mix of digital and hardware solutions that worked in tandem to improve health outcomes.
Patient App
(My workflow!)
Provider Portal
Patient Base Station
(Environmental Sensor)
Smart Pill Box
Wearable
(On-body Sensors)
As the user UI lead, I led the design of our mobile Fourth Trimester Health app and built the visual language for our environmental station.
The Challenge
Honda tasked us with designing an innovative solution for wellness.
"…leverage on-body and in-environment sensors, machine learning (ML), and large language models (LLMs), to create a platform with a digital twin of the user, providing personalized recommendations to improve their physical and mental health.
Ultimately, develop a comprehensive sensor platform to monitor and enhance individual well-being…."
Problem Definition
We focused on post-partum mothers as our users, because despite being the most fragile phase of recovery, the postpartum period remains overlooked in maternal healthcare.
Nearly 80% of post-partum deaths are preventable with timely care.1
Black women are 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, even when controlling for income and education.2
53% of pregnancy-related deaths occur after delivery, often within the first year postpartum.3
1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (2022),
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). – Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pregnancy-Related Deaths – United States, 2018–2021.
3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRC) Report, 2017–2019,
Rapid Prototyping
Our patient application had three big goals: monitor, inform and support.
(Goal 1)
Monitor Mother's health readings from on-body and environmental sensors
Translate and make sense of rich data…
….through a gentle, prioritized interface
(Goal 2)
Keep Mother + Provider informed of sensor anomalies
Notifications, color coded keep mother empathetically informed
Patient App
Provider Portal
Providers are informed of urgent anomalies automatically
(Goal 3)
Gently guide Mother with personalized best practices
At account creation, Mother's profile provides us with an understanding of her health profile
..allowing us to provide rich health insights and recommendations
Final Solution
To build a working MVP with full-stack capabilities, we focused on breadth of features rather than depth.
Home hub with prioritized notifications and action items
Health Dashboard reporting sensor data and trends
Onboarding questions to personalize maternal health insights
Profile with compiled health and sensor history
Development Process
AI tools and Material Design's design system jumpstarted our prototyping.
this was my first foray with AI visual prototyping tools
We presented our functional prototype to 15 Honda stakeholders.
We knew that our product wasn't perfect, but the goal was to build a functional prototype that would serve as a launching pad for future research and we did so.
Had I more time, I would have further tested the impact of our Insights, Mitigation Techniques, and Emotional tracking features with mothers. With providers, I would have further tested the messaging feature on our user app.
Thank you for reading! I am happy to talk about the process of designing First Trimester Health further.
Thanks for stopping by!
I'm actively seeking product design roles at companies building thoughtful, research-informed products.
