ZEN - A meditation app to help calm your mind
iOS APP
ZEN
Let’s get started with your activities today.
Soothing tunes
Audiovisual
60 minutes
Reader’s stories
Audiovisual
60 minutes
Sleep music tonight
Audiovisual
60 minutes
Explore Sleep
Today
Meditate
Sleep
Move
Manage your anxiety.
Manage your stress and anxiety with meditation exercises.
Continue
ZEN
Let’s help you with a short breathing exercise to help calm you.
Exercise
Breathe in
The brief of this project required me to design a meditation app meant to assist all potential users to destress, relax and calm their anxiety down. It was important to make sure this is a Native iOS app which contains at least 4 features and has elements of gamification that can be helpful and engaging to the user.
MY ROLE
Research, Design & Prototyping
TIMELINE
September - October 2024
TOOLS
Figma, Google Forms, Adobe Photoshop, Social Media, Desktop research
Goal
The goal of this project was to design an iOS native app with extra features in order to meet the brief and be successful.
OVERVIEW
The Problem
Our potential users need a simple meditation app with gamification features that can help them destress, meditate and practice better mindfulness.
RESEARCH
2022
My first goal with this project was to read the brief several times to try and fully understand it. To get a full grasp of what it required from me and what duties were expected from me.
The next page includes handwritten notes during my ideation stage that were transferred from physical paper to digital paper. Some notes may be unreadable but they include HEX codes and general brainstorming that helped me reach my final stage of designs.
The next page includes handwritten notes during my ideation stage that were transferred from physical paper to digital paper. Some notes may be unreadable but they include HEX codes and general brainstorming that helped me reach my final stage of designs.
2024
This project is a redesign from it’s original state in 2022. I decided to revisit it with my newly acquired skills and polish it up to become a better version of itself. It was a great way to assess my skills and test myself as a designer to see how far I’ve come since being my days as a college student. I also do believe that it’s important for us as designers to constantly revisit our work and develop better ways of designing and improving it, no matter how small.
IDEATION & RESEARCH
Pictured above and below are images of my digitally & physically sketched notes which helped me to jot down major points from the brief and understand it better.
For this next stage, as part of my research, I decided to visit the Discovery Health website to remind myself of what kind of branding Discovery uses. I noticed that Discovery uses a limited colour palette consisting of white and blue as a primary colour.
After visiting Discovery’s website, I made a list of possible apps to draw inspiration from. My list in full included apps such as Headspace, Calm, Smiling Mind, TIDE & Mindfulness Coach. These apps can all be found on the app store and each of have them have a distinct look and feel to them. For starters, Mindful Coach uses gamification in a simple way and just like Discovery’s website, also uses limited colours consisiting of blue and white with little iconography.
COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
Smiling Mind uses a soft colour palette, has illustrations that can be rightfully considered cute, includes a dark mode presumably for whenever users want to use the app at night. Something that seems to work for Smiling Mind is it’s use of icons and illustrations to convey a message of comfort to the user.
TIDE & Mindfulness Coach are well-made apps which find their strength in the use of soft colours and unlike all the mentioned examples so far, TIDE relies on images instead of illustrations and even includes daily quotes as part of it’s features.
Headspace, uses soft rounded buttons, a few distinct icons and relies heavily on illustration but another thing that seems to work for Headspace is how it uses text and eases the user into the app during the onboarding stage. Headspace, which also has a dark mode, includes short articles and videos to help users with meditation, anxiety and even sleep.
The last app on my list, Calm, uses glassmorphism, soft colours and also relies heavily on imagery which works brilliantly. Calm offers music, meditation, sleep stories and sounds of nature which users may find extremely helpful during late nights.
RESEARCH CONTINUED
The next part of this project was to go right back to my notes and ask myself “how are each of these apps similar to one another?” How do they differ from one another? What sets them apart from each other besides their design & stylistic choices? What draws users to them?
To answer those questions, I asked a single user from each app what they liked about it specifically. I unfortunately could not find any person using the Mindful Coach app.
A Calm user mentioned that he enjoys the Audio Masterclass, which is a series of audio classes taught by experts from around the world on how to manage topics such as depression, habits, fears and eating to name a few.
A Headspace user mentioned that she enjoys the sleepcasts and soundscapes which helps to alleviate her insomnia on many nights when she is anxious or stressed.
A TIDE user mentioned that he enjoys using the ‘’Pomodoro” mode. This confused me at first as I had never encountered the word before, but I soon learnt that the Pomodoro technique is a time management system which encourages people to work with the limited time they have rather than against it.
MOOD BOARD
PAPER WIREFRAMES
LOFI WIREFRAMES
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Welcome to ZEN
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1:47
Welcome to ZEN
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Welcome to ZEN
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What can ZEN help you with today ?
Your answers won’t stop you from accessing other activities and can change anytime
Improve mood
Increase focus & productivity
Improve sleep quality
Reduce stress & anxiety
Self-improvement
Something else
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1:47
What can ZEN help you with today ?
Your answers won’t stop you from accessing other activities and can change anytime
Improve mood
Increase focus & productivity
Improve sleep quality
Reduce stress & anxiety
Self-improvement
Something else
Skip
Next
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What activities do you enjoy ?
Your answers won’t stop you from accessing other activities and can change anytime
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Journaling
Journaling
Journaling
Journaling
1:47
What activities do you enjoy ?
Your answers won’t stop you from accessing other activities and can change anytime
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Journaling
Affirmations
Breathing & Meditation
Walks
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Healthy habits form through consistency
When will you make time to work on your mental health?
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MORNING
08:00 AM
DAY
12:00 PM
EVENING
08:00 PM
Let’s get started
1:47
We need a few seconds to prepare ZEN for you
When will you make time to work on your mental health?
Let’s get started
Customizing exercises
Creating an optimal plan to improve your mood
Preparing your first activity
Complete Setup
Sleep
Music
Home
Explore
Sleep
Journey
Trends
Good morning
MONDAY
FAVORITES
DAILY REFLECTION
Mon
19
Tue
20
Wed
21
Thur
22
Fri
23
Sat
24
Sun
25
Mon
26
9:41
New daily reflection
Morning Preparation
How are you feeling today
Meditation
Start a session
NEW JOURNAL ENTRY
9:41
Welcome to your first daily reflection
Every day in ZEN, you’ll find a short morning preparation and an evening reflection. These will help you reflect on your how feel before starting your day and then allow you to go through how the day went. You will also be guided in assessing how did you feel vs. how you’d anticipated it, and in drawing conclusions from that.
Today, since it’s already middle of the day, we prepared only one introductory reflection for you. It will get you started smoothly and give you a sense of how this practice will look like starting tomorrow
9:41
How well did you sleep today?
We ask about your sleep so you can monitor it, and improve it’s quality, since good sleep is essential to healthy and prosperous life. After a few days you’ll see insights and charts of your sleep quality on the trends page.
9:41
What’s your main focus for today?
Pick up to 3
Friends
Family
Travel
Fitness
Date
Pets
Reading
Partner
Work
9:41
What do you plan to do today?
Start writing...
The
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Q
W
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T
Y
U
I
O
P
A
S
D
F
G
H
J
K
L
Z
X
C
V
B
N
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123
space
9:41
You completed your first reflection & started a streak
Inner work is a journey. Every question you answer, quote you read, journal page you fill is a closer step to your wiser self
1 DAY STREAK
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
ZEN streaks are motivating but you can turn them off if you like
You can also hide them later in Settings
Use streaks
9:41
How many days do you want to reach with your streak?
ZEN streaks are here to motivate you to maintain consistency of practice. It’s a key to building a lasting habit and becoming your better self.
Zen
10 Days
15 Days
31 Days
3 Days
9:41
Zen
1 DAY STREAK
Good job!
See you tomorrow!
Daily Reflection Completed
First Journaling Prompt Answered
First Energy Metric Added
Keep exploring ZEN
FINAL DESIGNS
As a way to clarify and add further context, the newly designed screens from this project include the lighter shade of sky blue, the pink flower icon, better input fields and buttons, and new design elements.
Some older screens of ZEN as pictured above.
