Mariah Jahntz

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Mariah Jahntz

CASE STUDY · CARINGBRIDGE

Transforming the CaringBridge iOS experience

I stepped in after an external partner’s engagement to evolve a more intuitive, accessible, and emotionally supportive app for people navigating difficult health journeys.

OVERVIEW

Design ownership with continuity

CaringBridge helps people share health updates and find support during overwhelming moments. My role was to carry the iOS redesign forward—preserving the strongest early ideas while improving usability, accessibility, and emotional clarity across the product.

ROLE
Product Designer

SCOPE
iOS UX, interaction design, accessibility

PARTNERS
Product, engineering, external design, QA

THE CHALLENGE

Designing for moments of cognitive and emotional load

People arrive to CaringBridge looking for reassurance, clarity, and a way to act quickly. The legacy experience made essential tasks—creating updates, finding support, and navigating content—feel more demanding than they needed to be.

01 — Reduce friction in creating and sharing updates

02 — Create navigation that feels calm and predictable

03 — Improve readability and support assistive technology

04 — Bring warmth and reassurance to key interactions

DESIGN APPROACH

Evolving the app with continuity and care

MOBILE-FIRST FLOWS
I simplified content hierarchy and placed high-frequency actions where users needed them most, reducing unnecessary steps in core tasks.

SUPPORTIVE INTERACTIONS
Gentle guidance, clear feedback, and predictable states helped the product feel less clinical and more human.

ACCESSIBLE BY DEFAULT
I designed for readable hierarchy, scalable type, and assistive technology so every user could participate with confidence.

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL DELIVERY
Close collaboration with product and engineering translated design intent into durable, implementation-ready patterns.

PROCESS

A redesign built through research, foundation, parity, and iteration

01 — Understanding the current experience

Before redesigning screens, we identified the biggest pain points. We reviewed existing app flows, support feedback, product requests, missing mobile functionality, Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, and the places where web and mobile experiences diverged. This made it clear where modernization would have the greatest impact.

02 — Building a modern foundation

The redesign wasn’t just visual. We rebuilt interaction patterns throughout the app by simplifying navigation, improving hierarchy, increasing accessibility, updating typography, introducing modern spacing and layouts, and creating reusable UI components. Every decision aimed to make the experience feel intuitive and familiar to iOS users.

03 — Bringing web features to iOS

A major initiative after the redesign was feature parity. Working closely with product and engineering, I adapted web-only capabilities—including Ways to Help, Support Requests, improved sharing, visitor engagement, notifications, following experiences, and author management—for native mobile behavior rather than simply copying the web experience.

04 — Continuous iteration

Following launch, redesign became an ongoing process rather than a one-time release. I regularly conducted usability studies, tested prototypes, gathered stakeholder feedback, partnered with engineering, and refined existing experiences based on user behavior. This allowed the product to keep improving instead of treating redesign as a single milestone.

From fragmented paths to focused moments

The redesigned experience brought essential information, posting actions, and supportive cues into a more coherent mobile system.

OUTCOMES & REFLECTION

A more consistent foundation for care

The transformation created a clearer path through the product, strengthened accessibility standards, and gave the team a scalable design foundation for future iOS work. Most importantly, it made the experience feel more considerate of the people relying on it.

What I learned

Designing in healthcare means treating small interaction details as moments of care. Strong cross-functional collaboration and early accessibility advocacy were essential to carrying the product forward with confidence.

LET’S CONNECT

Let’s make meaningful experiences together.

Open to thoughtful product design conversations, collaborations, and new opportunities.

Resume

Contact

LET’S CONNECT

Let’s make meaningful experiences together.

Open to thoughtful product design conversations, collaborations, and new opportunities.

Resume

Contact

LET’S CONNECT

Let’s make meaningful experiences together.

Open to thoughtful product design conversations, collaborations, and new opportunities.

Resume

Contact