I designed a mindfulness app as a personal project, starting from idea to product. The app lets you find quiet spots in the city to get away and meditate, and then tailors suggested content.
OBJECTIVE
My main goal was to create the shortest possible user flow from entering the app until the final stage of playing the content, in order to elevate stress or anxiety as quickly as possible. As a user, I was always frustrated from the overwhelming amount of content in mindfulness apps and the inefficient ways of filtering. Most of the time I ended up exiting these apps and feeling frustrated.
CHALLENGE
In order to reach this goal, my biggest UX challenge was to define the categories for filtering the content. Is it faster for the user to filter by emotional state they're in? or is it too personal? Is it more intuitive to choose from types of content? As a user I like to search content that suits the state I'm in. One of my Spotify's favorite searches is music for washing dishes.
UNIQUE FEATURE HELPED DEFINE PRODUCT
After researching other mindfulness apps I realized I don't have a unique selling point and this disappointed me. I felt like I needed to get more excited about my product. So I came up with a unique feature: User can look for nooks. quiet and cosy spots in the city to get away to, and have a moment of peace. This helped better define the product and I think it also helped expedite the flow. It gave the user a more proactive part in the process, and led to a feeling of empowerment.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I am still not sure I managed to fully tackle the categorization challenge. but on the other hand, top rated apps like Insight Timer don't have it fully figured out either :) Other inspirations were the amazing music Endel app which inspired my choice of categories as well as the beautiful minimalist UI. AirB&B was a big inspiration for the finding-a-nook flow.
ZenNook was made as a final project in my UXUI studies.