Behind the Design: Headspace

Few apps person made mindfulness arsenic accessible arsenic Headspace.

More than a decennary since its launch, the app continues to acceptable the modular for intelligence wellness apps — an particularly notable accomplishment, arsenic it tin beryllium hard to pass challenging topics similar mindfulness and intelligence wellness done an app. "Demystification is simply a connection we usage a lot,” says Jeff Birkeland, Headspace elder vice president and wide manager for subordinate products. “Mindfulness and intelligence wellness tin look complex, possibly mystical, possibly adjacent inaccessible. So however bash we marque it approachable and friendly? And however bash we get radical to the close contented faster?”

The reply is an intentional premix of design, organization, and style. “I deliberation the basal of our occurrence from the precise opening was creating a lukewarm consciousness and brand,” helium says.

It’s hardly an overstatement to accidental that Headspace has been portion of a tremendous societal alteration regarding intelligence health. Birkeland says the app has been utilized by much than 100 cardinal radical successful astir 200 countries and regions, and it’s casual to spot why. Headspace is an incredibly versatile instrumentality for anyone looking for a speedy clarity break, longer guided sessions, oregon assistance with slumber oregon exercise. And its immense room of resources is determination whenever radical request it.

Headspace smartly organizes its room of resources done language. Collections and exercises are labeled with understandable purposes, similar Unlocking Creativity, Mindful Eating, and The Shine Collection, a acceptable of activities drawn from Headspace’s caller merger with Shine, a mindfulness app dedicated to providing inclusive and accessible intelligence wellness resources that enactment marginalized communities. “It’s inactive a elemental app,” Birkeland says, “but it’s not a precise agelong travel into an extended archive.”

How bash we marque [mindfulness and intelligence health] approachable and friendly? And however bash we get radical to the close contented faster?

In erstwhile versions of Headspace, the halfway navigation included tabs for meditation, focus, movement, and sleep. But Birkeland says idiosyncratic probe convinced the squad to portion distant that complexity and absorption alternatively connected the app’s Today tab, which facilitates one-tap entree to activities of varying lengths for morning, afternoon, and night. Importantly, it does truthful without bringing up circumstantial categories.

The Explore tab, meanwhile, is the gateway to that immense slope of contented — including those erstwhile category-based parts of the halfway navigation. “There’s inactive simplicity astatine the surface,” says Birkeland. “But there’s an unthinkable extent of contented underneath.” This tab is besides wherever radical find collections and activities of each kinds, including those with titles similar Cultivating Black Joy and Navigating Injustice that exemplify Headspace’s committedness to representation.

“Mindfulness, meditation, intelligence wellness — nary of these are casual to navigate,” Birkeland says. “An app that feels warm, friendly, and casual to usage tin supply approachable enactment for pugnacious issues.”

Learn much astir Headspace

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Behind the Design is simply a bid that explores plan practices and philosophies from each of the winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we spell down the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to observe however they brought their singular creations to life.

Explore much of the 2023 Behind the Design series