Stop, Breathe & Think

2014–2019

While consulting in 2014, my business contact received a lead for a project with a small non-profit in Los Angeles that had a successful after-school mindfulness program in place for underserved middle and high schools. Tools for Peace wanted to explore the possibility of turning their entirely paper-based curriculum into a website or application for mobile phones and tablets. The students required access to mindfulness audio that they could select and listen to when they were outside of the classroom.

Original Project Goal

Create a mobile solution for primarily middle and high school students to be able to receive tuned mindfulness exercises based on how the person was feeling. Secondarily, create an inclusive product that would work for a wider audience.

Major Challenges

  • Extremely tight budget and timeline – we needed to work efficiently and leverage the validated curriculum materials in order to create even a prototype.

  • Existing branding was incompatible to interface work – multi-color brand and inaccessible hues required updating. The only graphic language available was a line-art style created by the comic artist and illustrator Corinne Mucha.

  • No client product experience – Tools for Peace needed to be guided through the process, and was not comfortable with wireframing or low-fidelity prototypes.

The Original Core Team

Jamie Price – Executive Director at Tools for Peace

Loren Witcher – Lead Mindfulness Instructor at Tools for Peace

Alan Stuart – Creative Director at One Long House

Myself – UX/UI Lead, UX Writer

Russell Quinn – Engineering Lead

Paul Wehner – Web Prototyper

Corinne Mucha – Illustrator

How might we create a shoestring mindfulness app that delighted students?

Version 0.1 – Web Prototype

Scoping and Initial Research

In order to create the first prototype, we sat down with Jamie and Loren and learned the existing curriculum. It was a 6 month course with activities that ranged from mindfulness session recordings to creating a group mandala. Scoping the curriculum into a product required understanding what areas were the most impactful over the complete course for the students. Lauren had the most direct access to students, and I helped guide him through how to conduct user interviews and direct observation.

The resulting qualitative information clearly demonstrated that many of the students had chaotic home lives and being able to match a mindfulness session to their current feelings would be the best place to focus our limited time.

It was time to create a simple prototype to generate more feedback. As mentioned before, Tools for Peace needed relatively high-fidelity prototypes in order to make decisions. I worked in the shadows creating wireframes, then would skin them with a UI for approvals.

This is an early version of what became the Check-in workflow. The testing was conducted using a web prototype on iPads.

Students would input how they felt physically and mentally in a scale (with sassy copy!), then type or pick up to 5 emotions.

User testing (with Lauren’s help) in the classroom revealed that giving students a blank field to type in emotions made them freeze. We tested a number of different designs and groupings for picking through 125+ emotions, but ultimately a simple list grouped into 5 major categories created the least friction.

NB: notice the challenges surrounding brand colors and accessibility early on.

Version 1.0 – iOS

Technology Pivot

The web prototype was a success in a very controlled classroom environment with quality wifi. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for the students when they left the campus. Most had access to mobile devices, but the data plans were anemic. We knew that for this to be a real product, we would need to be able to support offline use.

Tools for Peace had some choices to make. The user testing showed promise, but to spend money on a native app to launch in 2015 was an expensive undertaking. The first choice made with my counsel was to first focus on one platform. The second choice was how to fund the initiative without impacting their core programs.

Jamie had some connections up her sleeve, and made mention of a benefit concert by a key celebrity donor. She maneuvered in the background as we pushed forward with turning the web prototype into a compact experience for 320 x 480 phones. Russell Quinn jumped on board to help us from a technology side, starting a long collaborative relationship between the two of us.

Workflows and Keynote Clickable Prototypes

Time was compressed, so leaning on the learnings from the web-based prototype we worked to smooth the experience and add simple features to the V1. One feature was the ability to track a few use-based streaks and collect “stickers” for specific milestones. We had many discussions surrounding whether such gamification was appropriate in mindfulness, and ultimately we decided to keep it simple so that habits could be formed but users wouldn’t be constantly getting new rewards.

The need to create every comp as WYSIWYG had manifested itself into transitions and animation design as well. In normal circumstances in 2014, I would have jumped into After Effects to build examples. With this project’s timelines, I turned to Keynote to create a complete clickable prototype with transition animations. We iterated and user tested within Keynote until all stakeholders were aligned. That translated directly into the work Russell did with my art direction and collaboration. The resulting V1 of the app launched in spring 2015 with what we thought would be little marketing or fanfare.

We were wrong 😂

k.d. lang, Canadian contemporary rock legend, was behind the whole thing. She did the benefit concert. She paid for the development. We had no idea.

“How might we create extrinsic rewards in a way that is compatible for something as intrinsic as mindfulness?”

  • iOS Home Screen

  • iOS Mental Check-in

  • iOS Physical Check-in

  • Emotion Picker

  • Check-in Results Screen

  • Player Screen

  • Caboose Screen

The quiet year of 1MM unique users

Tools for Peace had launched Stop, Breathe & Think into a market that included only two major competitors at the time: Insight Timer and Headspace. SB&T was also completely free to use with the original set of mindfulness tracks. While the intended use was in schools, the reality was that a large contingent of middle-aged women were finding and using the app from k.d. lang.

At this point, the budget was spent and the server costs were rising. My time consulting was at an end, but Russell kept the app afloat and worked to add the ability to pay for lifetime use of new premium tracks to offset the costs involved.

Customer feedback was also coming in, and a purposely quirky brand for teens was somehow also attractive to this new user base. While I emphasized inclusivity in the design and writing I did, I didn’t expect it to stretch as far as it did.

1MM Unique Users in first year

60k MAUs by 2016

4.5 ⭐️ in the App Store

$0 marketing budget

V2.0 – Startup

The popularity of Stop, Breathe & Think had created a monster for Tools for Peace. In order to cover expenses and give the product the time it needed, Jamie co-founded a spin-off startup with product marketing executive Julie Campistron. I was their second hire and headed up design and product.

Startup Project Goal

Increase personalization of content to drive free users to become SaaS users.

Major Challenges

  • The year of slow development had allowed more competition to enter the paid market, reinforcing SB&T as the free leader.

  • Mobile engineers in 2016 were being swept up by FAANG companies at alarming rates, forcing engineering to hire offshore.

  • The app needed a graphical and content overhaul to match the more premium offering the business strategy was built on.

  • Expansion into yoga videos was seen as an easy win.

Key Activities

  • Created a product roadmap and idea backlog with a near-term goal to improve the user experience, add video content, and build an Android app. Long-term strategy was to build out programmatic content, add journaling, and create a Feed for personalized recommendations based on user activity.

  • Created a multi-stage voice of the customer research project:

    • Large-sample demographic, motivation-to-use, and price sensitivity survey

    • Secondary in-depth motivation-to-use survey

    • Qualitative User Interviews

    • Personas

    • Persona-based User Lifecycle Mapping

  • Built a close relationship with Customer Support to identify key pain points

  • Hired a product manager

  • Created a robust beta-testing and usability testing program for new features.

  • Designed major updates and additions to all parts of the app, creating a more polished experience while maintaining some of the whimsy of the first version.

The Startup Core Team

Jamie Price – Co-founder and Head of Content

Julie Campistron - Co-founder and CEO

Jim Gray – VP of Engineering

Myself – Director of Product & Design

Loren Witcher – Content Strategist

Russell Quinn – Engineering Contractor

Corinne Mucha – Illustrator

How might we create a mass market SaaS business out of a free app?

Partial view of live User Lifecycle Mapping touchpoints.

  • Updated Home Screen

  • Explore Screen

  • Emotion Picker

  • Item Detail

  • Player Screen

  • Caboose Screen

Exits

Product managing and designing Stop, Breathe & Think was a rewarding and challenging experience. We were able to professionalize the app and build to a successful exit through being purchased by Meredith Corp. I departed before the transition, and Meredith multiplied the team by many factors to push it into mainstream adoption.

What we accomplished

At the time of my departure, we had tripled the amount of content, and moved heavily into internationalization and video content. The company sold for 4x the investment, making it a moderate success in terms of startups, but a huge success based on where it started. We maintained very high user satisfaction and adoption rates throughout my time.

Key Learnings

  • Inclusivity in design is worthwhile even when you think you know your market.

  • Prototyping and validation is worth it every time.

  • Cultivating great user feedback channels mixed with robust analytics creates clarity in product strategy and design of existing products.

  • Starting as a free choice made pivoting to a SaaS model very difficult. Our users loved us because we were accessible. Other companies in the market pulled out ahead through massive upmarket SaaS profits that could be turned into stronger content.

  • I witnessed the end of highly successful indie app design and development outside of gaming. Larger investment is now needed to grab attention in a more mature market.