Mindful design starts with a mindful designer, and one of the best ways to reach mindfulness is to take some time to meditate each day. Meditation aids focus and concentration, improves self-awareness, helps with anxiety, addictions, depression, pain, and reduces stress.
Today I want to talk about Headspace, a mindfulness meditation app focused on improving our digital health by providing meditation sessions. This is not only a valuable product to use for us digital consumers but also a great mindful design inspiration for every product designer.
The story of Headspace starts in 2008 when Richard Pierson, 27-year-old Londoner, burnt out from his career in marketing, starts having anxiety attacks. Seeking help, he turns to Andy Puddicombe, a Buddhist monk with 10 years of Tibetan spiritual training who is on a search for “peace of mind”. They make a deal: Pierson will give Andy some marketing tips for his new meditation business in exchange for mindfulness training.
Pierson not only found relief from anxiety after these sessions but also got so excited about meditation that the duo decided to work on Andy’s business together in 2010. Now Headspace is one of the most popular meditation apps out there, with annual revenue of $100 million in 2020, 2 million paid subscribers, and 65 million of total downloads.
Why do we consider Headspace a mindful product?
1. It provides mindful services
Besides providing mental and physical health benefits through the use of meditation, the app can also foster self-love and love for others, compassion, and kindness. In other words, it helps you care about people and the planet, thus sharing the same goals with mindful design.
2. Welcoming, friendly, and time-efficient onboarding
Upon first app launch, we are offered a short “breathe in - breathe out” exercise, which is a great way to start a conversation, especially for a meditation app. Except for the forced login screen that we’ll discuss later, the first time user experience is smooth and joyful. There is an optional animated breathing exercise followed by a recommended free basic course. You are offered a short series of questions about your personal needs, making the Headspace’s value proposition clear from the get-go.
3. Helpful Information hierarchy
There is a lot of content in Headspace, yet I found the app navigation intuitive. The first item in the bottom menu is Today and displays my personal meditation plan. The remaining items - Meditate, Sleep, Move, Focus - are centered around my needs as a visitor. Meditate menu has meditation courses and single meditations. Sleep menu has sleep casts, sleep music, wind downs, soundscapes. You can find mindful cardio, yoga, quick workouts in the Sleep section, and focus exercises and soundscapes in the Move menu. Just like in Feng Shui, every item here serves its purpose and functionality.
4. Variety of content serving multiple needs, inclusivity
I appreciate the number of useful and thoughtful courses that address different needs, whether it’s anxiety or stress management or a light cardio workout. There are also meditations for kids, which I thought was a great idea.
Headspace app addresses unique customer needs by providing abundance of content
5. Optimistic and fun branding
The brand colors - orange and yellow - symbolize joy, warmth, enthusiasm, creativity, success, encouragement, change, creativity, and health. Along with the use of beautiful illustrations, the colors support me in my journey, giving me hope and motivation. I also appreciate the fun banner videos - for example, the one about the brand’s story.
6. Variety of free content you can get without subscription
I’ve stumbled upon lots of app reviews that mention lack of free content and how boring and repetitive the free Basic course is. After doing an app content audit as a non subscribed visitor, I counted 20 free meditations besides the Basic course that consists of 10 short 5-min on average daily meditations. I actually quite enjoyed the free courses - Loving Earth, Loving Humanity, Acknowledging Our Privilege, Practice Patience, Self-love, and many others.
There are also some free meditations in the Sleep, Move, and Focus menu, making it about 42 free meditations and exercises in total. Is this enough free content to get a sense of the app? To me - absolutely.
The yearly subscription is around $70. Is it a lot? For the US market, it seems to be quite a reasonable price to pay for peace of mind, increased happiness, and improved quality of life, assuming you are using this app the way it was meant to be used - on a regular basis.
7. Instant feedback and support
I appreciate the instant feedback I’m getting after each meditation and in general throughout the app. I find the use of gamification very engaging. For the most part of my user journey feel encouraged, supported, entertained, and, most importantly, in the flow.
I appreciate the instant feedback I’m getting after each meditation and in general throughout the Headspace app.
Things to improve
As a visitor, I feel a bit pushed
I didn’t like the fact that I’m seeing a forced login screen after the initial splash screen. As a first time user, I would love to get a sense of the product first before committing. I also feel a bit pushed towards purchasing a subscription.
Free content is buried
Headspace has more than forty free meditations but there is no filter to see all of them. So, discoverability of the content might be a problem for people checking it out.
As a visitor, I would like to see at least a 15-30 second preview of each course or a meditation, similarly to what Audible does. This will help me determine if the content is worth my attention, or worth subscribing for the not subscribed visitor.
The “breathe in - breathe out” exercise on initial launch is so fun - why not start with it every time you launch the app?
In sum, I find the overall UX of Headspace fantastic - it’s engaging, motivating, provides instant feedback and a lot of useful content for a mindful lifestyle with a variety of free content. You can try the app for free for the whole week before committing to a subscription, and it’s easy and joyful to get started with meditation as a daily habit. To me it's certainly one of the most mindful digital products out there.