Helping each new generation find peace.

With over 2 million installs, 250,000 MAUs, 4 apps, and a successful funding exit, SB&T was a wild—yet mindful—7 years.

The Early Years

It all began with a non-profit…

In 2013, Tools for Peace contacted myself and my business partner at the time to see if we would be interested in building a prototype app based on their after school mindfulness curriculum. They had heard of us through our work with the Hammer Museum and were interested in our skillset.

We flew down to LA, met with Jamie and Loren at Tools for Peace, and decided to take the job. We proposed creating a web-based prototype first to work out the kinks and rapidly test in schools. I built a wireframe web site to get us kicked off and iterate through simplifying the massive curriculum into a 5 step process.

Once we had a pretty good idea of what was going to be included in the first version of the web app, I started designing and refining the experience. The idea of using emotions to tune a wizard to select a mindfulness audio track was a green field, but had similarities to selecting preferences from large arrays. Our first prototype included a forced bubble grouping visualization for users to understand how emotions related to each other. It was a success as a design object, but the runtime performance of the Javascript on iPads led us to abandon it in later rounds.

With the first web prototype in hand, we tested the concept with their after school program and received invaluable feedback. The students loved that it tuned to their emotions and they saw rapid adoption at the iPad listening stations. The students reported improved understanding of the coursework and benefits outside the classroom. Most importantly, the students wanted it on their devices to use at home.

Web-based prototyping

  • Early Web Home Screen

  • Early Check-in POC

  • Early Emotion Picker

  • Early Player Screen

So we decided to make an iOS app

When we decided to build an iOS app, Tools for Peace held a fundraiser to pay for it with the intent that the app would still be primarily for students in their program, but that we would build it inclusively so anyone who downloaded it could use it.

We found out later that the fundraiser was a concert performed by k.d. lang, and that she was a silent partner on the project. That turned out to be instrumental later in achieving initial success.

The fellow you see on the left there is Russell Quinn. He was the iOS developer for the first version of the app, and has become a close friend of mine over the years since these early days. Russell and I were the “magic” (founder Jamie’s word) that allowed us to iterate and work together to build a strong MVP.

The other person integral to the early work was Corinne Mucha. She supplied all the illustrations for the app, and has also become a good friend. I directed Corinne and used her own personality to help inform the voice of the app, which is distinctly non-stuffy.

Building V1

After many months of iteration, testing workflows, rebuilding screens, working through software development with non-technical clients, and ultimately prototyping high-fidelity in Keynote to get the timing right, we launched V1.

  • iOS Home Screen

  • iOS Mental Check-in

  • iOS Physical Check-in

  • Emotion Picker

  • Check-in Results Screen

  • Player Screen

  • Caboose Screen

And then k.d. lang promoted the app

We suddenly had a rabid fanbase of women over 40 using the app instead of just a few students! Luckily, it turned out that the voice and style that we had worked on was youthful, but not off-putting to our new audience. We had built something inclusive, right down to using an infinity symbol for non-binary users.

The Quiet Years

For the next few years, Tools for Peace wasn’t sure what to do with the app. It skyrocketed to being the solid #2 choice behind Headspace, but there wasn’t a technologist on staff at the non-profit to shepherd the project forward. Russell kept it operational and made small updates, but the early momentum was lost. The magic had left the building.

Founder Jamie had a decision to make: did she want to turn SB&T into a real product, or should she pull the plug to allow her staff to use the costly server resources elsewhere? She decided to turn to the startup community to find a CEO that she could work with to “found” the company. After consulting with people in her orbit, she decided to move forward with Julie Campistron. Julie was an experienced executive in digital product and marketing, and the two of them started building Stop, Breathe & Think, the startup.

The Startup Years

iOS All Ages Icon

In order to build a profitable business, Jamie and Julie came up with an even more personalized experience using AI as their differentiator. They started by talking to Russell and myself about their plans and our appetite to help out. They wanted the “magic” back! Russell and I both took the opportunity seriously, and I ultimately joined the team as the Director of Product and Design. Russell came on as a consultant.

I immediately began working on a unified theory of creating a personalized experience. We wanted to provide the user with just-in-time learnings that matched where they were and where they wanted to head. Building open-ended learning paths like this is a challenge to do in a way that is iterative. I came up with what we termed the Feed: a chatbot-like interface where we could message users different kinds of content, and based on their engagement we could tune the content to what they liked.

That was month 1 on the job. The following 6 months were some of the most difficult months I have had professionally. The company fell into a hiring trap immediately when it came time to hire developers. The experience level of available, affordable iOS developers, and the now 3-year-old codebase written in Objective-C was too much to overcome quickly. Our CTO was not an iOS-centered developer, and he did not have the network to pull in. This was also the time when Facebook was buying up all breathing iOS developers, causing the affordability factor to force us to work with offshore contractors.

Needless to say the grand vision stalled, and smaller visions appeared in its place. One such vision was to appear on the inaugural (and only) season of Planet of the Apps. Jamie and Julie made it out of the pitch round and were connected with Jessica Alba. Jessica saw the potential in using mindfulness with young children, and pushed us toward building a kids app. We embarked on a 2 month proof-of-concept app right when we hired another great full-time developer. Diego was amazing and we accomplished the goal through throwing out all process and just working “side-by-side” like a skunkworks team. It was shipped by the time our episode aired, and Apple featured us heavily in the App Store.

It was amazing! For two days. We had just thrown out our focused single-app strategy in order to chase funding and fame, and now we had two apps to maintain while building subscription bundling in a way that the original app was never developed to do. And Planet of the Apps was a huge dud. It turns out that building apps is boring TV!

From this point on, the team was stuck in a hamster wheel of maintenance, fixing issues due to scale and bundling, chasing notoriety, and trying to resuscitate the grand plan with a stretched team. We accomplished most of it, but the experience to the user was choppy due to the number of shortcuts the development team was forced to make in order to ship something.

  • Updated Home Screen

  • Explore Screen

  • Emotion Picker

  • Item Detail

  • Player Screen

  • Caboose Screen

Upheaval & Exit

With the pain of watching a nice experience degrade, and a lack of support from above to fix the problems, I focused much of my time and efforts planning out new product features and creative business solutions. I helped stand up a free lifetime subscription for teachers by using Zapier and Airtable instead of traditional development processes. I wrote a ton of copy for the Feed feature. I managed our Contentful CMS architecture. I worked with our illustrator to build beautiful animations for the kids app episodes. I helped our fantastic developer Tadeu get Android up to near parity with our iOS app.

At a certain point, it was clear that we were not going to be able to continue developing on top of the older iOS codebase and the patchy new features. We were going to need to start fresh with a Swift app. Our runway was gone, and we were surviving on bridge loans while the Series A round stalled. The years of chasing quick wins and notoriety had made my own relationship with the CEO stretched thin. I banked around 2 years’ worth of UX/UI to work with and said my goodbyes in February 2019.

The most valuable lessons I learned from my time were:

  1. Work with people you love and respect, and let them make things their way within the confines of the brand and goals.

  2. Even some startups that hockey stick lose momentum and enter a resource crunch. Focus is very difficult for founders in these times when a PR hit might change the fortunes, but focus is the only solution.

  3. Invest in great developers. Even when you think you have product-market fit.

  4. There are many ways other than design to help a company so long as strategy and the voice of the audience is integrated into the decision-making process.

Epilogue

Leaving did not ruin the company! They continued to rewrite and rebuild the rickety ship the way it should have been built in the first place. And the execs started to take suitors seriously. In the end, the company sold to Meredith Corp (owner of many, many magazines) for a healthy profit, and the team continued to improve the app.

When Meredith itself was purchased, Stop, Breathe & Think was a casualty of cost cutting and new strategy. In 2022 the plug was pulled on the app. A number of us worked to try to spin it back off as a still-profitable endeavor, but the parent company ultimately didn’t want the distraction. Focus is—after all—everything in product.

Next

O'Reilly Media