Minnesota Birth Center
Responsive Website Redesign
Minnesota Birth Center
UX Designer
150 hours
Setting the Stage Overview
This project is a full redesign of the Minnesota Birth Center’s website, aimed at making it easier for families to explore holistic maternity care and natural birth options. Guided by my passion for women’s healthcare and advocacy, I designed an experience that reflects the center’s warmth, empowerment, and support.
What is Minnesota Birth Center?
The Minnesota Birth Center is a freestanding birth center that offers a safe, natural, and family-centered alternative to hospital birth. Their midwife-led care focuses on empowering parents with personalized support before, during, and after birth.
What's the problem?
Existing website lacked clarity, warmth and modern functionality needed to engage prospective clients. Key information, such as how to begin care, what an orientation includes, and financial details, was either hard to find or not clearly explained.
The solution?
A new design that is grounded in user research and testing, prioritizes clear steps for beginning care, transparent financial information, and easy-to-understand language. The UI reflects a natural, welcoming tone while staying professional, helping users feel confident and informed from their very first visit to the site.
Taking a Closer Look Research
Before diving into the full redesign, I spoke with real users experienced in prenatal care and birthing to understand what they valued in a website. I also met with two directors of the Minnesota Birth Center to learn what they hoped to see in a new, improved site.
Client Kickoff Meetings
I met with the directors to understand their vision for the website, key areas for improvement, and top design and user experience priorities. Here is what I learned:
Desired First Impressions
Warm, welcoming, inclusive, professional tone
Communicate evidence-based care clearly
Visuals convey a safe, home-like yet clinical environment
Photos feature diverse patients and real midwifery care
Content & Structure Improvements
Reduce dense text, organize content efficiently (especially FAQ)
Make key services more visible (gynecology, well-person care)
Highlight statistics showcasing MBC’s strengths vs. national/WHO benchmarks
Interactive bios for doulas and staff
Prioritize essential resources (e.g., Education Binder)
Design & UX Considerations
Modernized look: less clutter, intuitive navigation
Visual storytelling: infographics, tables, midwife-in-action photos
Landing pages highlight MBC’s key strengths (stats, recognition, quality)
Easy to maintain and update (platform and internal bandwidth considerations)
User Interviews
Next, I spoke with people who had experience seeking prenatal care, or who were considering it, to understand their needs, expectations, and experiences with out-of-hospital settings like the Minnesota Birth Center. There were four key insights from these user interviews:
Users are looking for clear and concise information during their prenatal care search
Users are more likely to sign up for an orientation when they have all the details
Users want to read about the providers that will potentially be caring for them
Users want to feel tones of warm, welcoming and personable while on a birth center’s website, while still having a sense of professionalism and trusted medical care.
Connecting the Dots Define
With insights from both the client and potential users, it was time to make sense of the research. Using tools like How Might We statements, task flows, and sitemaps, I was able to organize information, clarify priorities, and establish a clear direction for the project.
How Might We?
Now that I had gathered research insights, it was time to synthesize the information. To clearly define the problems and reframe opportunities for solutions, I created ‘How Might We’ statements.
Problem #1
Users struggle to find clear and actionable information
HMW
How might we present essential prenatal care information in a way that is easy to find, simple to understand, and reduces frustration?
Problem #2
Users want a welcoming, trustworthy, and human-centered experience
HMW
How might we design the website to feel warm, personable, and professional, while helping users feel connected to the people who will care for them?
Problem #3
Users need detailed, transparent information to take action
HMW
How might we provide complete orientation and provider details upfront—location, timing, agenda, and staff bios—so users feel confident signing up and engaging with the birth center?
User Flows
User interviews made it clear that quick, easy access to billing and payment information is essential when researching prenatal care. Users emphasized that they don’t want to dig through a website to find financial details. I incorporated this insight directly into the design of the user flow for finding the billing page.
Putting it Together Design
Time to turn ideas into screens! I leaned on research and familiar app patterns to craft an experience that felt natural and easy to navigate.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
When I started my low-fidelity wireframes, I knew there was a lot of information to organize in a way that felt easy to scan but still engaging. I sketched different layouts, moving pieces around to see what flowed best, while keeping imagery in mind. I explored both mobile and desktop versions early on to make sure the experience would translate well across all devices.
Mobile Screens
Desktop Screens
High-Fidelity Wireframes
The high-fidelity designs reflect insights gathered through user interviews, where people emphasized wanting a natural, earthy, and welcoming feel—without losing professionalism. This guided the visual choices, like soft tones, clean typography, and open layout spacing. Across key screens, we prioritized clarity by creating step-by-step flows (especially on the orientation and insurance pages), simplifying content, and making actions intuitive. Acronyms were spelled out to ensure accessibility, and homepage info was made straightforward so users wouldn’t have to dig for essential details.
Let's See How it Works Testing
I wanted to see how real users would move through the site—what caught their eye first, what felt easy, and where they got stuck. Watching their interactions helped me spot a few areas to simplify and confirmed that my design choices were headed in the right direction.
User Testing Overview
Goals
Evaluate how easily users can find essential information on the site.
Identify points in the user journey where confusion or navigation issues occur
Assess whether users feel informed and clear about the next steps to begin their care after exploring the website.
Method
Conducted usability testing with 5 participants
Observed navigation to the Insured Clients, Prenatal, Birth & Postpartum Care, Midwifery Model of Care, and Meet our Team pages
Overall Findings
Users loved:
The calming colors and welcoming imagery that created a soothing, approachable first impression.
The clear, friendly homepage that made it easy to get oriented right away.
How simple it was to find key info like paying for care, meeting the team, and orientation details.
Opportunities:
Improve visibility of in-page navigation on the “Meet Our Team” section so users can easily find providers.
Shorten and better structure the Orientation page for quicker reading and easier scanning.
Clarify the “Transfer Care” page by renaming it to “Begin Care” and adding info for those switching providers, since some users confused “transfer” with hospital transfers.
Making Iterations
During testing, 2/5 users overlooked the in-page navigation for provider types. To make it clearer, I redesigned it as a distinct sticky section with its own color, subtle underline highlights, and bolded text when selected—making it clear it’s a mini navigation, not part of the page content.
During testing, 3/5 users found the Orientation page too text-heavy. Based on feedback, I condensed two sections into one streamlined overview for quicker scanning while keeping essential details. I also reduced the header image height across pages so users could see content immediately without scrolling.
During testing, 3/5 users misunderstood the “Transfer Care” page, thinking it referred to hospital transfers. Based on feedback, I renamed it to “Begin Care” and added guidance for those switching from another provider to make its purpose clearer.
Final Designs
Final Thoughts Wrap Up
Though my work on this project has concluded, the designs will continue to guide the Minnesota Birth Center website as it goes live
Reflections
Personal Growth & Learnings:
Learned how to make content-heavy websites scannable and visually appealing using imagery, icons, and visual hierarchy.
Discovered the importance of consistency in formatting to help users know what to expect.
Gained confidence in using white space and scaling font sizes, headers, and images appropriately.
Challenges:
Balancing design with content creation felt overwhelming at times.
Realized my role is to guide content structure, not to perfect every word—tools like ChatGPT helped streamline this process.
Next Steps & Takeaways
Future application:
Will apply lessons on balancing aesthetics, usability, and content in future projects.
More confident in creating effective, thoughtful designs for information-rich sites.
For Minnesota Birth Center:
Redesigned website is being implemented in collaboration with the IT director and developer.
Project reinforced my passion for UX design that empowers users and supports impactful organizations advocating for women’s birth rights.
Thanks for reading!
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