The Breath
Designing a bespoke breathwork app with premium teachers and classes dedicated to optimising mental and physical health.
Completion Date
2019 - 2021
Category
Product Design, UI/UX, Management and Branding for a bespoke breathwork app.
Sector
Health & Wellness / Fitness
Overview
The Problem (Discover & Define)
We ran a series of 40 user interviews so understand problems around mental health and current solutions on offer. We found these insights to be apparent.
Mental health issues are rife
Mental health issues are prevalent and growing on a global and national scale. 1 in 6 people experience a mental health problem in England each week yet there are a multitude of practitioners, apps and practices to help people better navigate these issues. So why are these problems so rife and are the solutions sufficient?
Meditation is challenging
60% of participants who practiced self-development practices said they did not meditate because they found it too difficult and could not reap the rewards.
Yoga is too much of a commitment
Many users of the correct demographic said that they didn’t have time to commit to a full yoga practice as they were so busy and felt constantly rushed.
Apps are expensive or too difficult
Many apps on the market at the time were either out of users' budget $10-15/month or were too difficult to lead to lasting change e.g meditation
The Solution - Design
Taking insights from our 40 user tests we identified clear user needs and designed to solve them. Some of these key themes and ideas were as follows:
Simplicity
The app had to be incredibly simple. Users had a clear need of wanting to attain a certain mood state at any given point throughout the day. We had to make this as easy as possible to achieve.
Educational
Users reported not knowing a huge amount about breath work so we needed to educate them whilst maintaining their interest and dedication to the app.
Effective
we’d heard from users that current solutions were problematic, either too complex or just not effective enough. We needed to quickly show them how easy and effective this practice was to keep them coming back to the app and reaping the rewards whilst also promoting practices or courses for long term change.
Affordable
we knew from user testing that many solutions on the market were too expensive so we agreed to portion the app at about $7 per month.
The Brand Identity
Strong, premium, trustworthy yet not too serious
March and I carried out a lot of the branding ourselves but worked closely with Studio Lowrie to perfect certain elements we wanted to explore further. The brand needed to be highly premium and trustworthy whilst not being overly serious.
Bringing the app to life
With clear insights from user testing, a strong brand identity I was ready to apply everything we had developed so far and to bring the app to life. I did all of the app design, testing and gathering feedback as I went with the occasional resource from external freelancers e.g the visual exercises.
Building the app in FlutterFlow
Due to the simplicity of the app and NoCode’s growing popularity and power, we decided to build the app in FlutterFlow. We hired a few freelance developers to build the app at an affordable price using mostly NoCode and applying custom code where necessary. Although the build took longer than expected and there were some limitations with FlutterFlow e.g subscription models and nav bar complexities, we still managed to build well within budget and were happy with the outcome.
Testing the BETA and releasing to App Store
Before launch, we ran tests of the MVP through TestFlight. The app was received very positively with users finding the sessions ‘extremely helpful’ and two users offering investment.
Of course, there were a few changes to make, for example, editing the design of the session cards to make the session details more accessible and fit more on the screen. However, for the most part, the app was received very well, our research and prior testing had paid off and we were ready to market to onboard more users.
Strong impact, steady growth
We had launched the app and began growing it organically. It was helping users achieve their goal of feeling how they wanted to feel in the moment with an affordable, effective practice. We were proud of what we had created and our users were too. A significant achievement was being offered investment from two individuals. March now runs the app full time and I help out where needed within Design and Product.
Deliverables
Product Design, Product Management, Brand Direction, Research, Q/A
Design Team
March Russell, Jacob Simons, +2 developers, Myself
