Rethinking the

BALLOON APP

Balloon meditation app on two smartphones with courses, exercises and mindfulness impulses.

UX DESIGN FOR THE Balloon Meditation App

mindfulLY STRUCTURED

INTRO

Balloon is one of the leading meditation and mindfulness apps in the German-speaking market.

The MissionMe team asked me to provide UX/UI Design support to restructure the "Discover" section and make content such as courses, meditations, podcasts, impulse cards, and inspirations clearer and more accessible.

It quickly became clear that adjusting just one area wouldn't be enough; and so the project expanded to encompass the entire app.

What started as 2 months turned into 2 years.

MY ROLE

UX design

UI Design

Prototype

User testing

In collaboration with MissionMe.
THE CHALLENGE

More Content. Less Clarity.

The Balloon app grew quickly. New courses, podcasts, exercises, impulses, and prevention programs were continuously added. But the original structure couldn't keep up., new offerings such as courses, prevention programs, podcasts, exercises and ideas continuously enriched the offering. The original structure could not represent this.

  • Users lost track of what was available
  • New content was only discovered by chance via newsletter
  • A lot of great content was never listened to

First Steps

I analyzed and documented pain points and existing user test results. From there, I developed a wireframe concept, that initially restructured the Discover tab and Home tab.

I work in wireframes first to solve structural problems efficiently, so no one gets lost in visual details.

The iterations were developed in close collaboration with design, product, and development.

Meditations-App Balloon auf drei Smartphones mit Podcasts, Slidern und Inspirationen.
THE APPROACH

MINDFUL

The new concept was rolled out gradually across multiple releases to gently bring existing users along.

  • Restructuring the "Discover" tab for intuitive navigation
  • Unify - transfer the new content structure and grids to the rest of the app
  • Integration of a filter function, for spontaneous inspiration
  • Integration of a full text search to find targeted content and spoken phrases

The new concepts received highly positive feedback in

USER INTERFACE

Details matter

Particularly in UI design, I completely rethought the existing, rather monotonous presentation of content — without changing the illustrative brand identity.The new, partially makes content easier to scan and was allow users to immediately recognize previously listened content and favorites.

  • Visually clear prioritization of filters, search functions, and content clusters
  • 2-column layout for individual exercises, providing a better content overview
  • More content depth instead of just headlines
  • Integration of sliders to cluster categories
  • Indicators for already-listened-to content
  • The brand's illustrated mascot more strongly integrated into the app to evoke positive emotions
Detail Screens einzelner Assets der Balloon Meditations App, zeigt ein und zweispaltige Medien, sowie slider
From a fairly monotonous layout (left) to more diverse formats.
MOVING FORWARD

More structure

more peace

After the launch of the Discover tab, there were further projects I redesigned.

All new features passed the frequent user tests positively, and through the gradual rollout of updates, the app remained familiar and intuitive for existing users.

Meditations-App Balloon auf drei Smartphones mit Mein Balloon, Kursdetail Ansicht und der Suchfunktion.
CUSTOMER
MissionMe

DURATION
2 years
LOCATION
Remote
TEAM
Small design team, close collaboration with product owner & developer
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PLATFORM
mobile app (iOS/Android), website
SOFTWARE
Figma, Sketch, Miro

LET'S GET

creative

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