Gutsy

A website for mothers.

Overview

Mothership is hard, even when you're part of a faith community...

my role

Sole Creator:
UX & Product Design
UX Research
Visual Design
Illustration & Data Visualization

team

Independent project

timeline

8 months

platform

NPO website

tools

Figma
Adobe Creative Cloud
Pencil & paper
Zoom

deliverables

Research
Design system
Interactive prototype
Case study

the product

Mothers are welcome.

Explore the interactive prototype, or continue through the story below.

Jump to Prototype

Essential Flows

home

resources

connect

the challenge

Motherhood can be deeply rewarding—and deeply isolating.

Mothers were navigating practical needs, family life, faith, and personal well-being across disconnected resources and relationships.

How might we connect mothers with practical resources, community, and mentorship in a way that feels warm, trustworthy, and easy to navigate?

DISCOVERY

Empathizing with Catholic moms.

Research led to ...

listening first

Mothers' needs were practical, rangining from housekeeping to mentorship.

Conversations with Catholic mothers surfaced needs ranging from childcare and household support to faith, self-care, and friendship. Across those different concerns, one theme kept returning: mothers wanted trusted people they could turn to.

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conversations lead to themes

Challenges were diverse, but the need for support connected them.

Interviews surfaced concerns spanning faith, family life, self-care, household responsibilities, and friendship. Affinity mapping helped organize those individual experiences into a clearer picture of where mothers needed practical help—and where they simply needed one another.

What patterns revealed

Mothers needed support that felt practical, personal, and connected.

The research pointed beyond a simple resource directory. Three principles began shaping Mothership as a place where mothers could find useful help while building relationships within their Catholic community.

01

PRACTICAL
SUPPORT

Everyday needs, from childcare transportation, to housekeeping, called for simple ways to ask for and offer help.

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

01

COMMUNITY
& CONNECTION

Friendship, companionship, and mentorship emerged as needs alongside the practical ones, making connection central to the experience.

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

01

FAITH IN
DAILY LIFE

Faith wasn't a separate category from motherhood. Mothers wanted ways to pray, share resources, learn, and support one another and their children within their Catholic community.

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

our user

Support needs change with every season of motherhood.

Colleen represents mothers balancing family responsibilities with limited time, energy, and nearby support. Her needs helped ground Mothership in a simple question: how can a community make it easier for mothers to both receive help and remain connected to others?

patterns revealed

Feeling needed was ass important as practical support.

cross different ages, backgrounds, and stages of motherhood, the interviews revealed more than a need for help. Mothers also wanted meaningful ways to contribute, connect, and feel valued within their communities. Support needed to work in both directions, making it easier to ask for help while creating opportunities to offer it.

The opportunity wasn’t simply to give mothers more resources; rather, it was to create a community where asking for help and offering it could feel equally natural.

Early direction

Turning my findings into something tangible.

I began sketching ways to translate a broad range of needs into a supportive, approachable experience for mothers.

ideas to insight

I began by exploring what support could look like.

The research pointed to needs ranging from friendship and faith to childcare, transportation, and everyday household help. I began sketching ways those different forms of support could live within one approachable experience.

structuring the experience

Then I worked out how those needs could live together.

Our representative user has to balance chronic illness with an already demanding life.

3 cards**

****

***

01

TOO MUCH TO TRACK

Information overload

Keeping track of everything affecting how I feel can become another task in itself.

KEY INSIGHT

Health information is scattered across symptoms, food, sleep, medication, stress, and daily routines.

02

PATTERNS ARE HARD TO SEE

Delayed cause & affect

Sometimes I know something made me feel worse, but I don't know what it was.

KEY INSIGHT

Symptoms may appear long after a choice or behavior, making cause and effect difficult to recognize.

03

DATA NEEDS CONTEXT

Knowing what matters

I can record what happened, but that doesn't necessarily tell me why it happened.

KEY INSIGHT

Logging alone isn't enough. People need help turning scattered information into meaningful patterns.

The research gave me the needs. The next challenge was giving them a form that felt welcoming, useful, and distinctly Mothership.

DISCOVERY

Understanding
life with an
invisible illness.

Research and conversations revealed a problem larger than symptom tracking: making sense of what the body was telling them.

RESEARCH

Mapping the complexity.

I mapped out the research to understand the scale of chronic digestive disorders and how symptoms, behaviors, and everyday circumstances intersect by making an infographic that summarizes it all.

USER CONVERSATIONS

Six conversations revealed how difficult it is to connect everyday choices with how you feel.

Participants described tracking symptoms, food, sleep, stress, and other factors across disconnected tools (or simply trying to remember them). The opportunity lay in connecting what the they were already experiencing.

01

TOO MUCH TO TRACK

Information overload

Keeping track of everything affecting how I feel can become another task in itself.

KEY INSIGHT

Health information is scattered across symptoms, food, sleep, medication, stress, and daily routines.

02

PATTERNS ARE HARD TO SEE

Delayed cause & affect

Sometimes I know something made me feel worse, but I don't know what it was.

KEY INSIGHT

Symptoms may appear long after a choice or behavior, making cause and effect difficult to recognize.

03

DATA NEEDS CONTEXT

Knowing what matters

I can record what happened, but that doesn't necessarily tell me why it happened.

KEY INSIGHT

Logging alone isn't enough. People need help turning scattered information into meaningful patterns.

THE HIDDEN BURDEN

Managing your health often becomes another source of stress.

People were already navigating pain, fatigue, unpredictable symptoms, and disrupted routines. Tracking it all could become another task on an already difficult day.

What patterns revealed

Tracking symptoms alone didn't make living with chronic illness any easier.

People weren't struggling to collect health information as much as understand what it meant. Three principles shaped the design:

01

REDUCE THE
BURDEN

Make logging simple enough to fit into daily life (not become another health-related task).

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

01

REDUCE THE
BURDEN

Make logging simple enough to fit into daily life (not become another health-related task).

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

01

REDUCE THE
BURDEN

Make logging simple enough to fit into daily life (not become another health-related task).

KEY INSIGHT

Tracking has to feel easier than remembering.

MEETing THE USER

Chronic illness doesn't stop when everyday life gets busy.

Our representative user has to balance chronic illness with an already demanding life.

competitor audit

Existing health tools capture data, but rarely connect the whole story.

I evaluated health tracking, symptom logging, nutrition, and patient-management apps. Most handled one part of the experience well, but few connected symptoms, food, sleep, stress, medication, and other factors into meaningful patterns.

Experience Synthesis

Mapping the emotional journey revealed where support mattered most.

I mapped my user’s day to identify where symptoms, uncertainty, and the effort of managing her health created the most friction (and where a product could meaningfully help).

Managing Brenda’s condition wasn’t one task, but dozens of small decisions competing with the rest of her life.

Design evolution

Finding a warm visual language that felt like a mother's embrace.

I explored symbols, typography, illustration, and botanical forms—looking for an identity that could feel distinctly Catholic and maternal without becoming overly literal.

Design Goals

find support

Make practical help easy to find and act on.

build connection

Create meaningful connections between mothers in their community.

feel welcoming

Make support feel warm, approachable, and human.

Coherence

Consistent design language across flows.
‍

Clarity

Straightforward UI,
no hidden steps.

Simplicity

Only the essentials,
easy decisions.
‍

Exploring the language

I started wide before narrowing the visual direction.

I explored symbols of motherhood, faith, support, and connection, from Marian and mother-and-child imagery, to "ship"-related visuals like anchors and waves. Catholic architectural forms were also a consideration, as well as abstract marks. Sketching broadly helped me see which ideas felt meaningful without becoming too literal.

WORDMARK EXPLORATION

The name became part of the identity.

I experimented with hand lettering, serif forms, script, and nautical details to find a wordmark that felt distinctive without losing warmth. The strongest directions began moving away from literal symbolism and toward something more personal and expressive.

mapping the environment

The visual language I established needed an environment to live in.

In parallel with the identity, I explored how Mothership could organize resources, community, and practical support without overwhelming mothers with options. Early wireframes helped establish a clear hierarchy and a flexible structure for very different kinds of content.

early interfaces

Testing the nautical metaphor on the page.

Early interface sketches explored layout, hierarchy, and ways to organize Mothership’s resources while still carrying the nautical ideas from the early identity work. Bringing those ideas onto the page helped reveal which of the concepts could support the experience, and which ones were becoming too literal.

botanical direction

Flowers brought warmth into the system.

As the identity developed, I began exploring botanical forms as a softer counterpoint to the more literal symbols. I sketched different flowers, leaves, and arrangements, looking for a visual language that could feel feminine and welcoming without becoming overly decorative.

The smartest solution wasn’t another device, but making the technology people already use work harder for them.

Somewhere between the sketches, flowers, words, and wireframes, Mothership began to feel like a cozy place.

Convergence

A clear identity takes shape.

Research, structure, and visual exploration began coming together in a unified direction. Mothership was becoming warmer, simpler, and more cohesive, with a language that could extend naturally from the brand into the experience.

Refining the experience

I next established a visual rhythm.

As the layouts developed, hierarchy, navigation, imagery, and content began working together more naturally. These iterations helped establish how Mothership could hold many kinds of resources while remaining clear and approachable.

visual wayfinding

Recognizing support was a big part of the project. I developed a visual system to guide the users.

I created a custom icon family for Mothership’s services, including mentoring, childcare, housekeeping, carpooling, prayer groups, and catechism. A consistent, simplified drawing style gave each category its own character while making the larger set feel connected.

FINDING THE BALANCE

The pieces were there; the balance was a little hard to find.

As the identity evolved, I admittedly struggled with all the sugary elements. Pinks, purples, and colorful flowers felt too saccharine and like a psychedelic mishmash, while contrast and composition lacked balance. In the end I settled for deep and vibrant greens and a light cream for the solor to reflect the botanical, comforting, and growth-inspired concept established both by the floral motifs and by the motherhood concept. Additionally, warm photography kept it human, and stripping the flowers down to two forms: one filled and used only on colored backgrounds; the other mere strokes overlaid on cream-colored fills, brought unity and clarity without losing warmth.

The details finally belonged together, and Mothership began to feel like a real place for real mothers.

The Finished website

A warm and supportive network for Catholic moms.

Mothership is a site where Catholic mothers of all backgrounds can connect, get support, and offer guidance.

when talking isn't an option

At work, in public, or anywhere privacy matters, the same conversational check-in works through text.

clarity in context

Quick entries become a continuous health record, helping users follow changes over time and turn scattered information into something they can understand and act on.

health isn't only data

Community creates space for another kind of support: learning from people navigating similar conditions, challenges, and questions.

the right input
for the right moment

There’s no single easiest way to log. Speak when it’s natural, text when privacy matters, or use Widgets when time and energy are limited. All contribute to the same health picture.

interactive prototype

Experience Gutsy for yourself.

Explore how Gutsy turns everyday check-ins into a clearer picture of your health, connecting symptoms, habits, and patterns over time.

Final reflection

The biggest challenge was making data meaningful.

Gutsy began as a way to help people track the many factors surrounding chronic illness. Designing it revealed a more important challenge: helping people recognize meaningful patterns without overwhelming them or overstating what the data can prove.

The opportunity was not to make people track more, but to help them understand the life they were already living.

capture