Relax App (2014)

Ancient breathing exercises paired with custom settings so users can receive the benefits of breath work in a setting that is truly relaxing to them.

Use foundational yogic breathing exercises but allow the user to choose sounds and scenery to personalize their relaxing breath work session.
Implement encouragement and motivation for people to return to the app and make breath work a daily practice.
Format for desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Research other yoga, meditation, and breathing apps.
Interview people on their relaxation and exercise habits, learning which apps they use and why.
Wireframe UX for devs to begin building out.
Create mood board/inspiration for UI.
Construct paper prototype of UX/UI to test.
Mock up final screens and flow for development.
Create marketing for App Store and social media.

I learned the importance of gamification in app design in this process; I found it’s a bit of a throttle that can be used lightly in a quietly encouraging way or fully in a way that is gatekeeping and taps into the user’s guilt as motivation to come back. Obviously, we wanted to aim for the former in this case.
People liked being able to do a quick “reset”. Although the goal is to progress through the breath work levels, building up to longer and more beneficial sessions, the Quick Start feature was appreciated by the majority of testers as it was easy to use in the middle of their day and they felt like they were still staying on track.