Designing an award–winning baby app | Pathways.org
Pathways.org
Role: Senior Designer, Stratosphere Digital
Responsible for end-to-end UI/UX
“Pathways.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to celebrating each child’s abilities, and helping parents keep their baby on developmental track.”
My job was to help them design their first mobile app, a CMS for their content, and later to redesign their website to match.
A selection of Pathways' print materials
Shifting focus to digital
Pathways is a long-time leader in distributing physical materials to doctors, but their digital presence was lacking.
Instead of being able to track their baby’s progress on the website, parents had to order (or receive from their pediatrician) brochures and checklists for tracking.
The flow for finding games or other information for your baby on the old version of Pathways.org
Understanding the parents
On the Pathways site, parents had a hard time picking the right content for their baby
Instead of being recommended the right content, parents had to:
go to the website
select their baby’s age range
select (and know ahead of time) the type of content they were looking for
and select the current week in baby’s development to find relevant content
Building an award-winning baby app
Serving up the right content at the right time to keep baby on track
We created a mobile app that:
Tracks baby’s development
Recommends games and activities to help
Makes it easy for multiple caregivers to track baby’s progress in one place
Baby’s progress at a glance
We dramatically simplified milestone tracking
Now, instead of referring to a website for information and manually tracking milestones via a checklist, you can do both tasks in one place. Marking a milestone complete is simple, and we visualized baby’s progress in multiple places.
Setting users up for success
We created a thorough, opt-in onboarding flow to establish common patterns
Navigating away from the onboarding was easy – you could just tap somewhere outside of it and come back to it later.
Empowering clients to help themselves
Now that we created the mobile app, Pathways needed a way to add to it.
Rather than manually manage the content ourselves, we opted to save the client a lot of time and money by letting them handle it.
Providing business insights
Pathways wanted an analytics page to see how their content was being used
So, we gave them an analytics dashboard that tracks the following:
Activities played by age and milestones
Milestones, abilities completed by age
Users and accounts created
Video and article performance by milestone category and age range
Designing the CMS
We made a place for Pathways to manage their vast library of content
With hundreds of activities, milestones, abilities, videos, articles, and more – they needed a robust system to add and link all of this content together to power the recommendation algorithm that our developers came up with.
Connecting the content
We made it easier than ever for Pathways to connect and translate their resources
To edit content in the database, all it took was a few clicks – select a row in the table to reveal a sidepanel where you can edit the content’s details, link it to other content, and even provide translations.
Recreating the mobile app for web
We opted for a mobile-first design that leaned into the app’s strengths.
By implementing a mobile-first design, we were able to meet parents where they typically preferred getting their resources.
Designing the homepage
We focused on establishing trust with new visitors in hopes of increasing engagement
I got laid off so I can’t speak to whether it worked, but it definitely looks nice 😅
Supporting mobile and desktop
We prioritized mobile, and we utilized a multi-column layout on desktop
I chose to use a mobile-first mindset for a few reasons:
We already had a successful base for the mobile designs
Weaving the rest of the site into the mobile app’s frame would save time and money
A majority of their traffic was coming from mobile devices
Results
135k mobile downloads
4.8 stars
Gold W3 Award (Family & Kids)
Silver W3 Award (Education)
Good Housekeeping Parenting award
Reviews
“I am a pediatric physical therapist... Of all the free apps (even the CDC developmental app), I would recommend this app to any parent seeking support for their child’s development.”
“The app is what takes Pathways from good to great as it is extremely user-friendly, simple to navigate, and still packs that great information in.”
“Absolutely love this app, I recommend all parents try it out. Bonus, ALL content is absolutely free!”
“This is the best milestone tracking app out there. Each milestone and ability has a video of a real baby to serve as an example, and you get weekly ideas for games and activities to do with your child to support development.”
From the client:
“Tom played an important role in the success of our healthcare app, delivering UX designs that consistently exceeded expectations.
What set him apart was his ability to think beyond the immediate ask. He approached the project as if it were his own, ensuring every design decision aligned with our long-term vision.
His strategic insights meant we never had to worry about unintended constraints on future innovations.”
— Nick Kerndt, Senior Director of Digital Strategy, Pathways.org
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Posted Mar 5, 2025
I designed an award-winning mobile app, a custom CMS backend to manage it, and a web app to replicate the mobile app's success.
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