Chopra Meditation & Well-being

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT DESIGN / LEAD DESIGNER / 2019-2021 / iOS B2C PHONE + IPAD APP & 2-sided marketplace

Chopra on iOS delivers meditation & well-being content customized for different mind-body types and experience levels, rooted in traditional Ayurvedic teachings with a focus on modern challenges.

As Director of Product Design, I worked with our organization to conceptualize a long-term app vision, test our way to delivering a well-being ecosystem, and ultimately design a highly-rated meditation app from scratch. We designed & built the app within a year, and it quickly became one of the top revenue drivers for Chopra.

OVERVIEW

Prior to the formation of the new product team at Chopra in 2019, the Chopra Center for Well-being sold meditation content à la carte, most notably the 21-day meditation challenges. Selling content involved lengthy and expensive campaigns that needed to be repeated each time a challenge was launched.

There was little personalization in the experience, and some members were finding the content format stale. Introducing new formats and programs was not realistic in the existing app framework, and our content management platform would not support mapping it to well-being attributes and user goals.

Mind-Body Types

The current market is saturated with meditation content apps. To avoid leaning exclusively on the quality of our content as a strategic advantage, we included our strongest lead-generation tool and a concept unique to Ayurveda as a personalization framework: users would know their own mind-body type and be recommended content based on it.

The three mind-body types are Vata (air), Pitta (fire), and Kapha (earth). A person may be born or grow up into a specific combination of mind and body traits. For example, a Pitta (fire) mind is direct, not afraid of confrontation, and might be hot-headed, while a Pitta body runs warm, and would benefit from cooling foods.

Rebrand

From 2019 through mid-2020, while concepting a 3-year app vision and testing concepts for an initial launch version, we brought on a terrific agency to guide us through a re-branding. The Chopra Center for Well-being needed to represent personas of individuals who are just starting or experimenting in their own journeys, while rooting in the 3000-year old Ayurvedic principles that built our trust and credibility with our core user-base.

Design System

Throughout our app and site development, I partnered with the product designer on our team and the brand agency to develop components that represented our experience pillars best throughout every digital interaction. You’ll find shapes that are soft yet a bit playful, and simple symbols that tie back to nature and human expression.

Personalized coaching vision

Designing for our 5 target personas (Recoverers, Fit, Improvers, Dabbler, and Spiritualists) we sketched, wireframed, and pressure-tested concepts through qualitative studies to help guide the product roadmap, while still identifying the high-impact MVP launch, which would pilot our new CMS, subscription service, and brand tone.

Early app concept, initially executed by Tino Agency based on wireframes provided by me.

Chopra App Launch

In Fall 2020, we launched the first version of the Chopra app, on an accelerated timeline due to COVID-19. This was a tremendous effort from our team, consisting of our VP of Engineer, Chief Product Officer, Product Designer, and newly-hired Engineering Managers, iOS and backend engineers, and the cross-functional Chopra team, especially the new Content team.

Our app is highly rated above 4.9 stars and has been received well with our previous core audience (Spiritualists) as well as new target personas for the business.

Chopra features single meditations and meditation programs & collections, personalized around mind-body type, goals, experience levels, and context. We launched with basic gamification and Apple Health integration, and designed future features such as journaling and offline capabilities.

Please reach out for a more in-depth process walkthrough and a peek into our future design considerations.