Relax App
A calming app for young meditation skeptics.
Relax* is a meditation app in early development designed for teens and young adults who are currently experiencing chronic stress and anxiety, but feel that classic guided mediation is not the right fit.
*Project code name – real name TBD.
The Problem Space
Many teens and young adults currently experience chronic stress, ‘busy thoughts’, anxiety, depression or other mental health conditions. They may find it difficult to fall asleep at night and often describe their lives as very busy.
During the user interview process, several people described their past experience with classic guided meditation apps as less than ideal; the writing was bad or the ‘voice talking’ could be annoying or difficult to engage with. Many people also had a strong preference to relaxing with ways more relevant to their interests such as games, music, or stories related to topics that interest them.
As well, those that were more receptive to guided meditation found existing meditation apps lacked features that they wanted, locked too many features behind an expensive subscription, or just took too long find what they were looking for.
Project Description
The goal of the ‘Relax App’ project is to introduce a new habit of ‘daily calm’ into young people’s lives through forms of media that is related to their interests. This includes relaxing music, zen-style games, short stories, and guided meditation.
This app also functions as a tool for their ‘mental wellbeing toolkit’ as something to reach for when they are feeling stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed.
Unlike currently available meditation apps on the market, the ‘Relax App’ project aims to offers a wider variety of ways to relax and focuses on a simple uncluttered UI; it is important for users to be able to find what they are looking for as stress-free as possible. The UI also features a focus on being able to sort audio tracks by time duration which is an important feature currently lacking in most existing meditation apps on the market.
Early Sketches and POP App Testing
These early sketches were made into a simple rapid clickable prototype using Marvel’s POP app. This very early phase was focused on rapidly testing out categories and overall navigation and ease of use.
