How the Shine App Streamlined Their UX to Make Self-Care a Daily Habit
One of the hardest parts of adopting a new habit: Making it fit into your day.
It’s a fact that Shine’s senior UX/UI designer, Mia Lavimoniere, had top of mind while working on the Shine app with the help of Apple developers at Apple Entrepreneur Camp this April in Cupertino, California.
“We realized we needed a more conventional UX so people can pick up Shine and understand how they can implement it into their day immediately,” Mia says.
It was easier said than done—the Shine app combines motivational messages, meditations, audio challenges, and journal-style check-ins to help users take care of their mental and emotional health on a daily basis.
Mia’s solution: Create a new Today tab that guides users through the three recommended actions they should take each day in the app to practice self-care and get the most out of their Shine experience.
Her design theory: Less decision fatigue and more relevant content will help users unlock the full potential of Shine as a daily self-care toolkit.
“What’s so cool about the Today tab is that you don’t have to think anymore,” Mia says. “It’s basically like having an agenda for how you’ll take time for you doing the day.”
Here’s what a day on Shine looks like with the new Today tab — and what inspired Mia along the way.
☀️ Morning: Start With Your Daily Shine
The Today tab includes a personalized greeting and kicks off with the Daily Shine — a motivational message and meditation to help users check in with themselves and what they want out of their day.
The Daily Shine is new every weekday, created in-house by the team at Shine HQ and drawing on research-backed tactics.
“It’s the first action we want users to take, and it helps them set an intention for their day and learn a new way to take care of themselves,” Mia says.
A check-in is included in the Daily Shine experience so users can log their gratitude and mood. Plus: They can go deeper on the day’s theme with a recommended article.
Each Daily Shine includes a custom graphic or GIF, and Mia gave the creative some love by adding a preview in the Today tab.
“I hope users get excited every morning to come in,” she says. “Now it’s more visual and gives you an element of surprise.”
🌤️ Midday: Take a Break, Breath, or Find Your Flow
Studies show that breaks can help refresh your brain and increase your productivity and motivation. That’s why the new Today tab includes a midday recommendation.
“We know how important it is to take breaks during the day, and we wanted Shine to really help users do that,” Mia says.
Whether that’s with a meditation, a mindful activity (mindful coffee break, anyone?), or ambient music designed to help users focus — the app will help users recenter and steal a few minutes for themselves.
🌙 Evening: Rest Easy
Finally: Users can rest easy with the Shine app, thanks to our end-of-day recommendation. They can fall asleep to a Nightcap (a boring retelling of hit movies), quiet their mind with a sleep meditation, or relax to ambient music.
“We know there’s a fandom around our Nightcaps — my personal favorite is ‘Space paJAMas’ — and now our users can get a fresh evening recommendation every single day,” she says.
🔎 For Everything Else: Search!
“If you’re looking for something beyond what we recommended, you can now search how you’re feeling in our audio library and find a meditation ASAP to help you cope,” Mia says.
Search for a meditation by feeling, title, or your favorite coach. Or: Browse our library categories to discover meditations and challenges that align with what you’re going through.
👩🏾🎨 How It All Came Together
The new UX creates a simpler, more cohesive experience for users–and Mia says it was born out of hundreds of iterations. How she stayed resilient through it all: Trusting the process.
“The more I share with my stakeholders, the more user feedback I get — it just helps me improve,” she says. “So I don’t mind iterating because it’s just going to be useful and helpful and it’s part of the process.”
The tools that helped her get it done: InVision and Sketch. “InVision makes it really easy for me to prototype my ideas and share them with the team or users,” she says. “And Sketch is the best design program ever — it makes it really easy to draw something up really quickly. These two programs together are *chef’s kiss*.”
Plus: The sweet sounds of Tame Impala and Post Malone, her go-to design music.
Mia’s hope for the new design: “I hope that the simplicity of the new layout inspires you to come back throughout the day when you need to take a few minutes for yourself — and that you can find the content you need really quickly,” she says. “Shine’s there for you at all times of the day. Morning, noon, night — we got you covered.”
The GIF that Mia says sums up her excitement about this new version of Shine:
Join Mia in high fiving a million angels — download or update the Shine app to the latest version to start using the new Today tab. 💥
Read next: How to Find Your Patience When It Feels MIA
