An App That Helps You Hit Pause on Modern Life
Speculative Project
Case Study
THE PROBLEM
It’s 3 p.m. and you’re juggling prep for an upcoming call, finishing a deliverable to send out, and wondering when you can squeeze in a workout, all while trying to decide whether to up the offer on the house you’re trying to buy. Don’t have 10 minutes for a guided meditation to settle the noise? Meet Interlude, the pause button for right now.
Modern life is chaotic and stressful. It doesn’t leave time for you to check in with your decisions, emotions, and desires, and most mindfulness apps only ask for more — dedicate time, sift through a bloated library, manage a subscription.
All of it leads to reactive decisions and worse emotional outcomes.
THE GOAL
To create an application that helps users pause and quickly reflect on their current circumstances, easing anxiety so they can act rather than react.
THE WORK
UX/UI Designer (End-to-end)
Idea Conception // UX Research & User Interviews // Product Design & Branding // Prototyping // Usability Testing // Handoff
3 months: Q4 2025 - Q1 2026
PROJECT OVERVIEW
When modern life won’t let you stop for a calming meditation, Interlude is there so you can hit pause. Where most mindfulness apps are passive and ask you to sift through bloated libraries, Interlude is a lightweight Zen companion that helps you decide, reduce, release, or reframe in real time.
WHAT ARE MINDFULNESS APP USERS MISSING?
Research Phase
1 week
Would mindfulness app users be interested in using something like this?
If so, what features would be most useful to them?
After interviews and a competitive analysis, I was certain Interlude didn’t need to compete with existing mindfulness apps — it needed the ability to outmaneuver them.
RESEARCH METHODS: How I Learned What Was Missing
Interviews
I interviewed mindfulness app users to understand why the apps they’d already tried weren’t working for them, and whether something more minimal might fit better into their lives.
Competitive Analysis
I looked at the mindfulness app landscape — what was already out there, what was working, and where apps were asking too much of users who just wanted a quick reset.
KEY FINDINGS: Can We Pick Up The Pace?
Interviews
- Users don’t have time to stop in the middle of their day and do a multi-minute meditation.
- Many mindfulness apps are too content-heavy, which ends up requiring too much time investment to navigate.
- Many mindfulness apps are subscription-bloated.
- Mindfulness apps send too many notifications, annoying or “shaming” users.
- Mindfulness apps are passive, not offering in-the-moment actions for users looking to reset their mindset.
Competitive Analysis
- Revealed a gap in the market where no similar solution existed.
- Most mindfulness apps are passive, content-heavy, and sit-and-listen based, requiring users to devote several minutes or more to their mindfulness experience.
- Other apps are not streamlined for quick and easy use and don’t appeal to people that are uncomfortable with “performative” mindfulness or “therapizing.”
Research Wrap-up
Together, the interviews and competitive analysis pointed in the same direction: no one was accounting for speed. What users wanted was less app, not more.
CREATING MINDFUL SOLUTIONS FOR MINDFUL USERS
Define Phase
1 week
My research findings gave me a clear direction: speed wasn’t a feature users wanted — it was the entire design problem. Creating affinity maps, points of view, how-might-we questions, and personas helped me focus on the key features to develop.
AFFINITY MAPPING: Elegant, Simple, And Streamlined = Less Stress
Creating an affinity map from the interviews allowed me to identify three key takeaways:
- Simplicity: Users want to quickly dip in and out of the app as they go through their day.
- Streamlined: Users don’t want an app that is bloated with too many features, making it difficult and time-consuming to navigate.
- Elegant UX: Users want the process of using the app to reflect the experience the app is aiming to provide — a minimal user experience that mirrors the simplicity they’re trying to return to.
POVs & HMWs: How Can We Make Mindfulness Easier For Users?
POVs and HMW questions allowed me to think openly and optimistically about potential solutions without yet worrying about feasibility.
POVs helped me cut through the noise to the challenges users actually cared about.
Arnie wants a streamlined, intuitive experience that will help him feel less overwhelmed by the pace of life and allow him to see his digital patterns more clearly so he can interrupt automatic behaviors.
Mary wants to make less stress-related, reactive decisions and instead make more deliberate decisions.
HMWs allowed me to reframe those challenges as design opportunities.
How might we make it easier for users to find clarity from the noise of everyday life so they can make more deliberate, better-informed decisions and remain centered during their day?
How might we design a streamlined app that users can interact with quickly, in real time, as they operate within the moments of daily life?
PERSONAS: Who Is This For?
After synthesizing my research findings with POVs and HMWs, two distinct personas became clear. These allowed me to stay connected to the needs, goals, expectations, and mindset of users before I entered the design phase.
Arnie
Struggling to keep up with everything going on around him, he wants an app that will help him find clarity quickly.
Mary
Stressed out by her high-pressure job, she wants to take back control of her decision-making process.
USERS WANT TO
HIT PAUSE
Based on my initial research and the subsequent work defining the challenges that mindfulness app users face, I was able to confirm that users would be interested in an app that allows them to pause during daily life so they can quickly check in to decide, reduce, release, or reframe in real time.
HOW SHOULD INTERLUDE LOOK & FEEL?
Ideation Phase
3 weeks
With my research completed and definitions established, I began to identify target users, develop a structure for the site, create user flows, and shape the Interlude brand. The hardest part wasn’t deciding what to build — it was deciding what to leave out.
This is my favorite part of the design process — here, it meant figuring out how usability, innovation, and visual appeal could all coexist but in a simpler form.
PROJECT GOALS & FEATURE PRIORITIZATION: Less Is So Much More
Laying out the needs of users, the business, and the technical limits in one place made it easier to see which cuts to make and reinforced the idea that not every feature that could be included needed to be.
Key features included:
- A select group of “paths” for users to follow, each of which addresses a specific challenge posed by modern life.
- A recap feature that reflects back to users what they’ve input into the app over a period of time so they can see patterns and recognize tendencies.
- Strong privacy controls, especially due to the private nature of the interactions with the app.
- Minimal UX/UI with simple, intuitive controls.
Each of these features earned its place because it solved one of the key research findings directly.
FEATURE PRIORITIZATION
Based on my research findings, I mapped out which features were most important to introduce right away, and which could be added in future improvements.
This road map helped me keep user priorities in mind as the design began to take shape.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
With Interlude’s priorities already clear from research, I created this Information Architecture Map aiming to refine and simplify the app down to its bare necessities.
USER FLOWS: How Will Users Move Through Each Path?
Next, I chose two user flows to develop. These gave me the opportunity to trace users’ steps as they interacted with the app and to cut anything that didn’t need to be there.
WIREFRAMES: Minimal But Impactful
Based on my user flows, I sketched out low-fidelity wireframes to see what was essential and what wasn’t — to test if a minimalist design could still give the experience users were asking for.
Decision Clarity Flow
Situational Reframe Flow
BRANDING & UI ELEMENTS: Like A Zen Notebook
How could I make Interlude feel like the pause it was meant to create, rather than another app competing for attention or time?
That was the question I needed to answer, so I chose brand values that reflected that goal — Balance, Calm, Growth, and Reflection. These were the words that guided design decisions when selecting colors, typography, logos, and UI.
IS THIS THING ANY GOOD?
Testing Phase
1 week
Now that Interlude’s foundation was in place, it was time to test it with real people. I was expecting pain points to emerge, but the real surprise here wasn’t a pain point at all — it was how smoothly the flows performed, and one flow in particular.
PROTOTYPING
Here, my user flows and wireframes formed the basis for prototypes designed to give users an idea of the Interlude experience.
Decision Clarity Flow
Situational Reframe Flow
USABILITY TESTING: What Do Users Think?
Next, I conducted usability testing with a group of users to see if it actually helped them find the pause they were looking for.
Target Users:
- Five participants
- Primary age range: 30-55
- Working professionals from a variety of work/life situations, tech-friendly individuals, Gen X and Millennials.
Success Rates:
Users completed the flow without questions:
- Decision Clarity - 90% // Situational Reframe - 100%
Users experienced no pain points in completing the flow:
- Decision Clarity - 90% // Situational Reframe - 100%
Users completed the flow in a reasonable amount of time:
- Decision Clarity - 100% // Situational Reframe - 100%
Users were satisfied with their experience once they completed the flow:
- Decision Clarity - 100% // Situational Reframe - 100%
Testing Wrap-up
Clearly, the response from users was strong, with only a few small notes to act on. Every tester finished the Situational Reframe flow without asking a question — a first in the process — and multiple users mentioned that Interlude is something they could see themselves using to pause their daily life.
MAKING INTERLUDE EVEN BETTER FOR USERS
Iteration Phase
1 week
If Interlude’s purpose is to help people do less, the app couldn’t afford to do more than it absolutely needed to. With the feedback I collected during usability testing, I placed an emphasis on cleaning up clutter, clarifying prompt language, and completely redesigning the Settings/User Profile section.
ITERATION: Is That A Lock?
Despite my best efforts, the design of the User Profile icon turned out to be confusing to users. During testing, multiple people asked a version of the question, “Is that a lock?” So I replaced it with a hamburger menu — which, as a happy accident, also led me to turn the User Account page into a pop-up menu instead of a full page. I think the design is better off for these changes. Thanks, user testing!
“Lock” Icon
Hamburger Menu
Old Menu
Pop-up Menu
HANDOFF
Revisions completed, it was time to prepare the designs for handoff to the developer.
Log In / Sign Up Flow
User Account Flow
Decision Clarity Flow
Situational Reframe Flow
CONCLUSION
Creating and designing Interlude was an educational process…
After organizing and synthesizing the research information I collected, there were still some areas where it was difficult to determine how best to implement the idea of Interlude. The biggest challenge surrounded what to include and what to leave out.
I constantly reminded myself to be discerning when determining which features to include. After all, when you’re designing a minimalist app for people to use during their day, it’s important to make sure you’re not adding another pain point, while still providing the outlet they’re looking for. As a result, a number of interesting feature ideas I considered were left out because they didn’t entirely fit with the minimalist spirit and purpose of the app.
This same challenge also carried over into the design phase, where I needed to reconcile a clean, uncluttered interface that matched the Zen attitude of the app with one that still felt engaging rather than so reserved that it became boring.
In the end, I think I was able to strike a good balance and create a lightweight and intelligent product that provides users a legitimate mindfulness option they can turn to during their day without a large time commitment or inviting additional stress.
If I were to consider next steps for Interlude, I would: design the remaining two paths I’ve envisioned for the app; consult with both mental health professionals and Zen Buddhism advisers to further refine the experience and messaging in the app; and investigate the best approach for the technological implementation of any in-app tracking features, e.g., algorithm-based versus AI-powered.
Interlude is a Zen mindfulness companion that helps users pause during the chaos of daily life, allowing them to quickly reflect on their current circumstances, so they can act rather than react.
Interlude, a pause button for modern life…