Pare by CodaHx

overview

Partnering with the founder of an early-stage AI healthcare billing startup for maternity care, I owned the end-to-end brand design and prototyping of their native mobile app ahead of development. I leveraged pre-existing user research to map complex medical billing workflows and determine information architecture.

Timeline

July 2025

SKILLS

Lo-Fi Wireframing, Hi-Fi Wireframing, Prototyping, UX/UI Design, Graphic Design

00. Goal

How can we help pregnant patients organize, understand, and plan their medical expenses?

01. Research

Previous research consisted of 1:1 interviews with participants who spanned all phases of the maternity journey, including 2nd/3rd trimester expectant mothers, recent postpartum mothers (e.g., 3 to 5 months postpartum), and parents with infants. Complexity of care included routine pregnancies as well as high-risk pregnancies requiring extra monitoring, specialist visits, preeclampsia ED visits, NICU stays (e.g., up to 74 days across multiple facilities), and patients utilizing fertility treatments/IVF prior to pregnancy.

KEY PAIN POINTS

Bill organization: Receiving 10–25+ separate, un-integrated bills arriving unpredictably via mail and multiple online portals from hospitals, OB-GYNs, anesthesiologists, labs, and pediatricians.
Comprehension: Deciphering non-itemized bills, complex medical terminology, billing codes (CPT), and medical abbreviations.
Cost transparency: Experiencing billing surprise in the third trimester or post-delivery due to unexpected provider charges, facility fees, or sudden label changes (e.g., designation as high-risk).
Managing insurance & billing errors: Navigating misbilled insurance (e.g., charges routed to old policies), unrendered services billed (such as delivery or medication fees), and time-consuming administrative disputes taking 10–20+ hours of phone calls.
Postpartum administrative burden: Managing insurance extension forms, short-term disability/leave documentation, and adding newborns to health plans while recovering.

02. Ideation

To reduce overwhelm from scattered, unpredictable statements alongside opaque terminology and unexpected financial surprises → The onboarding screens were designed to establish immediate context by collecting crucial care-stage details—such as pregnancy trimester and due date—to tailor the user experience.
To address cost transparency and fragmented organization → The main dashboard brings clarity upfront by displaying consolidated financial metrics ("Incurred cost" vs. "Projected cost") and real-time deductible and out-of-pocket maximum tracking, giving patients full visibility into their financial trajectory before delivery.
To alleviate cognitive and administrative burden of deciphering complex statements, managing billing errors, and tracking document trails → A seamless document ingestion and breakdown flow. Users can quickly capture paper mail or digital statements via a dedicated "Upload bill" module, which automatically categorizes records by document type, provider, and pregnancy trimester in the centralized "My bills" view.
To combat comprehension hurdles and hidden coding errors → Extract and translate dense billing codes (CPT) into an easy-to-read overview by converting fragmented physical bills into structured, digitized line items.

Lo-fi wireframes

VISUAL GUIDE

03. Mockups

From the lo-fi prototypes, we discovered a few usability improvements:

In the Onboarding page, it is easier for the user to view all available stages on one screen instead of having to scroll down to see later maternity stages.
Users want to view their insurance coverage and projected cost at a glance on the Homepage.
Users expressed the desire to see their maternity calendar from a 9-month view.