Building emotional intelligence with Prentify through culturally aware UX design

UX Writing
Emotional Design
Interaction Design
User Research
Accessibility

🤔 Problem statement

In South Asian cultures, emotional literacy in parenting is often overlooked. There is minimal exposure to psychological concepts such as unconscious thinking, emotional validation, and non-cognitive engagement techniques. This leads to generational gaps in understanding emotions, especially between parents and children.

How might we help current and future South Asian parents become more emotionally aware, communicative, and nurturing in their parenting approach?

Creating a parenting app focused on emotional growth

Parentify is a mobile app designed for parents or those preparing for parenthood, that focuses on emotional intelligence, reflective parenting, and community support.
The app combines scenario-based learning, emotional check-ins, curated resources, and peer support to help users grow into emotionally conscious caregivers.

🔍 Discovery & research

I began by interviewing 6 parents and 4 young adults from South Asian backgrounds to understand the emotional dynamics they experienced at home.
I also reviewed literature on attachment theory, parenting styles, and cultural nuances that influence emotional expression.
Key insights discovered
Parents often didn’t know how to “validate” feelings without giving in.
Many relied on disciplinary or logical approaches over emotional co-regulation.
Prospective parents felt unprepared for the emotional aspects of parenting.

🧠 Ideation & strategy

Based on the research, I defined key experience goals:
Encourage self-awareness through mood tracking.
Facilitate practical learning via scenario-based quizzes.
Promote reflection through score breakdowns and insights.
Enable emotional literacy through curated reads and expert resources.
Build community empathy by connecting users with others on similar journeys.
I mapped out user personas and designed multiple experience flows for new parents, single parents, expecting parents, and parents with children of different age groups.

🔧 Features & UX Design

The onboarding:

The onboarding flow introduces users to Parentify’s core values, emotional check-ins, reflective learning, and community care.

Feature walk-through

It also collects key contextual data like marital status, parental identity, and number of children.

This allows the app to tailor experiences such as mood tracking, community suggestions, and access to features like the child mood tracker. It’s not just functional, it’s the user’s first emotional touchpoint.

Onboarding questions
Home screen
Mood tracker

Scenario based quizzes:

Designed interactive micro-quizzes, these simulate real-world parenting challenges. Each answer reveals different outcomes based on parenting psychology.

Mood tracker for parents:

A prompt on home screen encourages emotional self-check-ins. Users select from a spectrum of emotions, which are stored and reflected back in their emotional trends.

Helping parents explore the emotional impact of everyday choices without judgment

These interactive quizzes simulate real-life parenting challenges where each choice reveals a possible emotional outcome, rather than a “correct” answer.
This encourages reflection over perfection, helping users understand the emotional consequences of different approaches and grow their awareness of child psychology and communication styles.
Scenario based quiz
Insights
Insights dashboard

A visual breakdown of emotional skills like empathy, validation, and emotional retention helps users track growth.

Read of the day
Read of the day & resources

Short, impactful reads (5–15 mins) including expert blogs, emotional development strategies, and child behavior theory.

Mood tracker
Mood tracker for parent and child (if any)

If users identify as parents during onboarding, they unlock this premium feature. It allows them to track their child’s mood and compare it with their own emotional data.

Curated community
Parenting community space

A moderated forum where parents can share stories, ask questions, and support one another; promoting empathy and shared experience.

📖 Reflections

This project allowed me to flex multiple muscles, product thinking, systems design, emotional intelligence, and storytelling. I approached the problem holistically, always tying UI decisions back to human behavior and cultural nuance.
When developed further, Parentify will serve as a culturally contextualized emotional toolkit for a new generation of parents aiming to raise emotionally secure children.
Testimonial
Dr. Ayesha Khalid
Associate Professor
“Momina brought empathy and structure to every step of the Parentify project. She skillfully translated raw user research into thoughtful feature ideas, balancing experimentation with clarity. Her ability to synthesize insights, test rapidly, and guide design decisions through ambiguity demonstrated maturity well beyond her years.”

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