TwoGrow
A Mobile App for Couple’s Mental Wellness & Partnership Support Postpartum
Summary
TwoGrow is a mobile application designed to combat emotional disconnection and burnout among first-time parents by focusing on the couple's relationship and mental health, rather than just baby logistics.
Project Goal: To establish a supportive, shared digital space that ensures both partners remain equally involved, emotionally connected, and supported through the postpartum transition.
Core Solution: The app facilitates this through two main features:
Emotional Calendar & Wellness Sync: Enables individual mental health tracking for the Primary Parent and provides the partner with Smart Nudges for actionable support.
AI Planner: Collaboratively builds personalized, equitable routines for the couple, automating task organization to reduce the logistical mental load and prevent resentment.
Value Proposition: TwoGrow helps couples maintain emotional intimacy, share responsibilities fairly, and proactively manage postpartum mental health challenges as a unified team.
Initial Findings
Finding 1
The hidden crisis is the strain on partnerships: New parents struggle to maintain their partnership connection while navigating the overwhelming practical and emotional demands of early parenthood.
Finding 2
Emotional struggles are mutual, but often go unaddressed, creating a silent emotional debt where partners are misaligned on stress and support needs, transforming internal struggles into external resentment.
Finding 3
New parents require routines that offer resilience over rigidity; inflexible plans fail when human variables (like exhaustion) intervene, demanding adaptive, collaborative frameworks based on real-time energy levels.
Context and Background
The transition to first-time parenthood is a period of intense emotional and logistical strain, yet existing digital support systems overwhelmingly focus on baby logistics (feeding, sleeping) rather than the parents' relationship and mental health. This leaves a critical gap for emotionally aware, modern couples who prioritize staying connected and equally involved.
The core problem is that, amidst the chaos of a newborn, couples often experience emotional disconnection, unfair burden-sharing, and silent struggles with postpartum mental health (PPD/A). This leads to burnout and relationship strain at a time when teamwork is most vital.
TwoGrow addresses this by positioning itself as the first mobile application dedicated to the couple's emotional journey after pregnancy. It is designed to be the digital anchor that facilitates shared emotional tracking, promotes equitable co-parenting, and provides gentle, structured communication tools. By focusing on teamwork, connection, and dual mental wellness support, TwoGrow empowers new parents to navigate the postpartum period together, transforming a potential crisis into an opportunity for shared growth.
The Challenge
New parenthood is often framed as a logistical challenge focused on the baby, but the real crisis occurs within the parental partnership.
1. Emotional Disconnection and Isolation
The overwhelming focus on the newborn causes emotional intimacy to rapidly erode. Parents, especially the non-birthing partner, often feel sidelined, while the birthing parent carries an immense emotional load. This results in partners struggling in silence and drifting apart, leading to feelings of loneliness and inadequacy right when teamwork is most vital.
2. Unequal Distribution of Mental and Physical Labor
Modern parents aim for equality, but the division of labor often defaults to traditional roles or becomes opaque and unfair. This lack of transparency and structure leads to resentment, burnout, and frequent miscommunication, which is often expressed as, "We're exhausted, overwhelmed, and don't always know how to support each other emotionally."
3. Lack of Dual Mental Wellness Support
Existing parenting apps ignore the emotional toll on the couple. There is little guidance on how to proactively support one another, or how to collaboratively navigate and identify the signs of postpartum mental health issues (PPD/A) in both partners.
The Main Issue We Aim to Solve: How to maintain emotional intimacy, divide responsibilities fairly, and support postpartum mental health together, preventing silent struggles and ensuring the relationship remains strong during this critical transition.
Design Question
How Might We help new parents to support each other through the emotional and practical challenges of early parenthood, so they can navigate this transition as a unified team, rather than struggling individually?
Ideation Part 1
I created user personas based on research & started the brainstorming process.
