Room to Breathe
Student Team Project
Year
2023
Duration
10 weeks
Overview
In today’s urban landscapes, high foot traffic and stimuli can become stressors for children and parents navigating public spaces. With Headspace’s Room to Breathe, families can relax and recharge through simple meditation via private, yet publicly accessible pods.
Throughout this project, my main role was defining the physical experience through 3D modeling and usability testing to create a delightful, inclusive experience for families.
My Roles
UI & Interaction Designer: Building interface prototypes for Room to Breathe's Pod and defining core interaction mechanics,
Industrial Designer: Developed and modeled Room to Breathe's physical product, aligning interaction goals with human ergonomics and headspace branding.
Outcomes
85%
Average user satisfaction with Room to Breathe's experience.
35%
Of users downloaded the app after completion of our usability test.
7 Awards
From the Indigo Design Awards (Including Gold in Product Design)
At a Glance
We All Could Use a Room to Breathe
Room to Breathe offers an private, immersive meditation and mindfulness experience for families in public spaces, utilizing the lessons and methods offered by Headspace.
Inside the cozy pod, families can engage with traditional headspace meditation sessions, as well as a brand new library of interactive activities for children to explore the foundational concepts of mindfulness. Lights and audio changes to deliver immersive experiences for users, offering an escape from busy public spaces.
While this project wasn't made in collaboration with Headspace, we of course made sure that our interfaces, character design, and marketing seamlessly coincided with their brand identity and mission.
Discovery
Bringing Headspace Out of The App
This project isn’t officially affiliated with Headspace—it was created as part of a class project.
Headspace is a mobile app that combines guides and activities, to teach user meditative strategies to help them relax, focus, or learn the fundamentals of mindfulness.
Rather than focus on innovating a select feature or facet of Headspace, we decided to start with a target demographic and an overarching goal for our project: designing for families and children, within public spaces.
Headspace has had some previous short-term ventures—such as special events or partnerships—where they've breached into the physical space and created an environment to facilitate content consumption. The company has shown it's interest in more immersive experiences, but hasn't made anything long-term or permanent.
Additionally, as far as competition goes, no other mindfulness app on the market has tried reaching into the physical space.
Concept
Validation and Ideation
Since we went into this project with a clear idea of what we wanted to do, we first took a step back and validated our concept through interviews and a co-creation workshop.
Since we went into this project with a clear idea of what we wanted to do, we first took a step back and validated our concept through interviews and a co-creation workshop.
Through artifacts like journey maps, personas, and user flows, we connected our extensive research to key moments and pain points to address in our concept.
Design Process
Creating Room to Breathe
We defined 3 core components of our project. My role focused mostly on designing the physical pod and the interactions within.
Thanks for Reading!
Check out more of my projects, or reach out if you want to learn more about this one!
