BumptUp

Making the jump from lab to App Store

Product Redesign, Platform Migration + Clinical Innovation | Fractional CTO | 2022–Present

How can we turn clinically validated research into a product that’s easy to use, emotionally supportive, and built for real pregnant people…not personas?


Long story short

$500k+

$500k+

NIH, SBIR, and Kentucky state grant funding secured

Very 1st

pregnancy loss experience launched

12+

practices using BU for healthier moms and babies

BumptUp Loss Content
BumptUp Loss Content
BumptUp Loss Content

❓The Problem

BumptUp began as a research study in Western Kentucky led by Dr. Rachel Tinius to test how regular exercise during pregnancy could improve outcomes for both mothers and babies. While the results were promising—especially among low-SES populations—the prototype app was built solely for trial purposes, with minimal UX consideration and no commercial path forward. At the time, the app:

  • Lacked a professional design system or UX patterns

  • Relied on manual calorie input with no food search or scanning support

  • Hosted exercise content externally, breaking user flow

  • Delivered no alternate experience for sensitive pregnancy journeys (e.g., loss)

  • Had no go-to-market strategy or technical roadmap

The challenge was to transform this clinical prototype into a scalable, market-ready product—while retaining scientific integrity and expanding the value it could offer to both users and healthcare providers.

🧑‍💼 My Role

Initially engaged through Codelab 303 as Director of Strategy, UX, and Experience, I led a comprehensive UX audit and heuristic review of the app, strategic positioning and competitive analysis, redesign recommendations for both UX and brand identity, and the creation of a full GTM strategy, including tactics, timing, and touchpoints. After this initial engagement, I was invited to become Fractional CTO—owning the product roadmap, technical architecture, and platform delivery. In that capacity, I:

  • Directed a more stable platform migration to Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) with established deployment practices

  • Co-led feature prioritization and rollout planning

  • Oversaw agency and engineering transitions

  • Led design system development and localization infrastructure

  • Partnered with NIH and SBIR-backed teams to build new clinically-sensitive flows

While this role continues to grow with the product as it embraces more B2B opportunities, the core functions of delivering a superior pregnancy outcome and experience to mother's remains the most interesting and exciting part of the job.

🔍 Approach + Process

Though the clinical product produced incredible results and data from a scientific perspective, the same rigor and consideration had yet to be applied to product and experience itself. To that encd, I undertook a phased approach in helping to refine the BumptUp experience.

Phase 1: Audit, Brand Positioning + UX Redesign

  • Conducted heuristic UX audit to identify friction and clinical artifacts

  • Benchmarked against leading pregnancy apps to find the right space for a trusted, science-forward brand

  • Removed non-viable features, recommended phased rollout of higher-value ones

  • Developed a new visual identity emphasizing trust, empathy, and confidence

  • Proposed scalable UX patterns and content strategy via a component-based system, improving author experience and easing speed to live for new content initiatives

Phase 2: Platform Strategy + Transition

  • First presented and advocated for a React native transition, later guided tech stack transition toward Kotlin Multiplatform with Firebase, RevenueCat, and Looker Studio

  • Transitioned from externally hosted content to a WordPress-powered in-app CMS

  • Re-architected food and calorie tracking system with:

    • Barcode scanning

    • Ingredient search

    • Brand and quantity filters

  • Redesigned the exercise flow to keep users in-app, improving usability and retention

Phase 3: CTO Leadership + Feature Expansion

  • Directed multi-agency engineering transition, stabilizing delivery velocity

  • Led the creation of a pregnancy loss experience—a first-of-its-kind personalized flow triggered via a single opt-in

    • Users avoid being re-exposed to triggering images or prompts

    • Flow offers physical, emotional, and psychological support

    • NIH-funded, demonstrating clinical and product impact

  • Launched Spanish localization (full app + CMS content)

    • Expanded infrastructure to support future RTL Arabic content and character sets

    • Design system supports LTR/RTL switching and variable types

  • Designed, strategized, and specced a moderator-less social feature implementation that encourages interaction without allowing for unmoderated discussion to diminish the clinical, scientific perspective of the app

🛠️ The Solution

BumptUp continues to grow and gain traction among users and practices alike. The most recent roadmap I've published contains numerous features, quality of life improvements, and iterative changes to continue to deliver on BumptUp's mission of creating healthier outcomes for mothers and babies.

Clinical-Grade UX

  • Redesigned calorie tracker, exercise videos, and symptom logs for clarity and ease

  • Created lightweight, structured survey interfaces to reduce friction while preserving data quality

  • Delivered on research rigor and consumer expectations

Community + Content Innovation

  • Designed a low-risk, semi-social support feature:

    • Users grouped by pregnancy stage, location, activity level

    • Emoji/canned reaction system reduces moderation needs

    • Avoids misinformation, retains evidence-based integrity

  • Introduced Reddit topic scanning engine to track high-engagement topics

    • Weekly/monthly topic summaries handed to SMEs for new content creation

Go-to-Market + B2B Positioning

  • Created a dual-path launch strategy for B2C (app stores) and B2B (provider networks)

  • Developed pricing and packaging models to appeal to clinics and care systems

  • Defined messaging to differentiate BumptUp from both lifestyle fitness apps and pure medical portals

🪞 Outcomes + Reflections

I'm proud to reflect on how far BumptUp has come so far. We've gone from zero paid users to initial patient cohorts via provider partnerships. We had a successful launch on iOS and Android, navigating the product from a clnicial setting to commercial viability without diminishing the scientific underpinnings of the original app. We've also received positive feedback from clinical users, and strong alignment with medical group outreach goals, with the product now used in practice settings to support improved pregnancy and postpartum outcomes. As a design leader BumptUp is a continuing lesson in holding two truths at once: honoring the precision of clinical research while shaping a warm, accessible, emotionally intelligent experience for users. As a design and product leader, I’ve had to build trust across researchers, engineers, clinicians, and users, navigate funding uncertainty while creating a roadmap for scale, and translate grief, resilience, and care into UX patterns that feel respectful and human This is what it looks like when a health app grows up—grounded in research, rooted in empathy, and built to last.

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