NeuroNation's flagship product is a brain training platform, but they had built an MVP for a meditation app to complement this. I was brought onboard as a PM to bring the app to the UK and US, but after some initial user research, it became apparent that I would need to redesign and rebuild the app from scratch. We had a timeline of 5 months to bring the app to market again.
I was the product lead for the meditation app, managing a lean app-building machine of a team with 1 full-stack developer and 1 graphic designer (plus a superb UX agency based in Poland).
Our goals included:
(a) Rebuild the app from scratch to bring it in line with user's expectations for other meditation apps, e.g. Calm and Headspace.
(b) Re-launch the new app in Germany, and release it for the first time in English-speaking markets.
Throughout my time at NeuroNation, I dedicated every Friday entirely to user testing, interviews, and research. I involved my developer and designer too, getting them to sit in to see first-hand how users interacted with what we were building.
Early testing with the existing MVP revealed fundamental usability issues, especially when it came to navigating the courses. The app was based on a journey metaphor, with courses being represented visually with flags along a long, scrollable path, with a balloon – our app's anchor – leading the way. However, users struggled with the lack of context and description, and reported that they were not aware of the difference between sessions.
Additionally, customisation of the sessions (including session length and amount of spoken guidance) took place in a conversational interface with a professor character, representing the scientific partnership the company had with a specilist in this kind of meditation. However, this tested particularly poorly with American and British audiences.
So, we decided to overhaul the entire structure of the app. We kept the colour scheme, natural feel, and ballon, as these were positive, but changed, among other things:
- The way users navigate sessions within a course. We introduced a playlist, naming each session to set an expectation about the content, replacing the horizontal scroll to find flags on a visual map.
- The way users customise their experience. We introduced a simple settings menu to change all settings at once, replacing the conversational interface with the professor.
- The journey metaphor. Users loved the balloon – and based on positive responses in testing, we introduced the ability to set your own colour for the ballon, but rather than having the balloon journey along a path, we introduced a different natural world for each course, which the balloon hovered above. Using layered Lottie animations, each session completed would add a new visual element to the world, for example, a family of rabbits, or a pine tree, visually displaying progress.
All of these changes were refined and tested in our weekly prototype testing sessions. I build prototypes and mockups using Invision, Balsamiq, and Marvelapp, and worked with an agency in Sketch and Figma to refine our designs.
Throughout the development process, we created test builds for others in the company to check in on our progress and give us feedback, in addition to use in testing with users.
When it was time for release, the whole company helped QA the app, as we didn't have dedicated QA resource. I created a document to gather and track feedback, which I wrote about and shared on Medium for PMs in a similar scenario.
Below, you can see our new session customisation menu, both as my crude mockup, and as the final design. During testing, I extensively revised the microcopy in this menu to reduce the reading burden, switching from questions like "How much spoken guidance would you like" to simply "Guidance".
We re-launched the app in May 2019, and were thrilled to receive several thousand organic downloads in our first few weeks. We received very positive feedback, both from existing German users on the re-design, and from new English-speaking users.
During this early period with less traffic, we introduced more courses to build out our catelogue, as we launched with 2 courses only (one free, one premium). By the end of July, we had 6 premium courses available.
Below, you can see how the course selection UI changed during the re-launch, including a glance into some of the different worlds in the Ease app.
One huge part of the app launch process involved writing the content. I collaborated with NeuroNation's expert contact to produce scripts and recordings for the meditation sessions in German. I then translated these into English, however, when it comes to recording, I don't exactly have the best voice for leading a meditation.
I carried out research, and we found overwhelmingly that English speakers find a deep male voice with a Scottish accent most relaxing.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a speaker with a Scottish accent, but we did get a British speaker with a wonderful voice and a Scottish grandparent. His voice received very positive reviews. We had a lot of fun every Thursday in April recording the audio in a professional recording studio around the corner from the office.