Sensie, helping a founder fuse ancient wisdom with modern technology
Z1 accompanied Mike Dannheim on his journey toward creating an app to tap into the wisdom of our bodies for instant personalized wellness.
Fusing spiritual and ancient wisdom with modern technology was Mike Dannheim’s life challenge. He accomplished it with Sensie, an app that triggers a greater connection to personal wellness, available now on the App Store and Google Play.
The tale of Sensie is a long story of overcoming that started when Mike suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident at the age of 20. He recalls how the western medical system deemed him helpless and thought he would suffer from short-term memory recall issues for the rest of his life.
After helping lead the international expansion of Groupon throughout Asia and being a part of the management team of a hot YCombinator-backed tech startup, Sensie’s founder dealt with enough stress to know something needed to change.
It was a hopeless situation, but after he almost hit rock bottom, he started a new way of living focused on meditation and mindfulness, practicing daily. Six months later, his life began to take off, and nothing would be the same.
After helping lead the international expansion of Groupon throughout Asia and being a part of the management team of a hot YCombinator-backed tech startup, he dealt with enough stress to know something needed to change.
Mike had a greater purpose: to mix eastern spiritual techniques and neuroscience with technology to help create access to deeper intelligence, creativity, and flow levels. But how? He wondered, “how can we pursue building our dreams while still living a full life outside of work? How can we have it all?”
Building meaningful partnerships
Mike partnered with his friend and software entrepreneur Thomas Gersten. Thomas has over 20 years of AI and engineering experience, as well as a wealth of experience in the healing arts. Previously, Thomas helped lead the development of Xbox Kinect and Azure at Microsoft.
Together they tried to answer the same question: “How could our powerful mobile devices be the key to helping us tap into the wisdom of our bodies?” They built a research platform and began working with some of the world’s top researchers with backgrounds from MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, UC Berkeley, and Stanford to find answers.
But it was when Mike partnered with Satyen Raja and his WarriorSage leadership training that things took off like a rocket. Thanks to Satyen’s work, they realized they needed to integrate the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology with spirituality. “Listen to your body. Let it guide you. It knows the way,” became Mike and Thomas’ mantra.
Then, they started scanning for the best design and development agencies they admired and found that Z1 was the perfect fit.
“We have a complex project that has a tremendous amount of detail, and Z1 was able to understand the full scope fast and went above and beyond by helping us develop a full end-to-end mobile product that had the ability to wow our customers”, declares Mike.
“We have a complex project with tremendous amount of detail. Z1 understood the full scope fast and went above and beyond by helping us develop an app that wow our customers”. Mike Dannheim, Sensie’s Founder.
The founder, who is obsessed with design and how to help the customer, found that “the beauty of working with Z1 is really their ability to see deeper into the design process and come up with unique solutions that I wasn’t even thinking of, and then execute on the full delivery of the solution”.
Addressing a design perspective
There were multiple complex design questions that we needed to overcome. The app combines the science of manual muscle testing and Natural Language Processing with machine learning techniques to help create an objective signal representing whether a present stimulus makes you strong or weak.
Translating this into a clear and intuitive user experience was a priority, so we spent extra effort creating a compact design system and integrating complex algorithms and data sets into the interface.
Each string appearing in the app while exercising with Sensie defines a value, helping users understand the messages their bodies send. We tested different configurations and considered Sensie’s feedback and knowledge every moment to ensure that the app offered users a valuable and enjoyable experience.
The app combines the science of manual muscle testing and Natural Language Processing with machine learning techniques to help create an objective signal representing whether a present stimulus makes you strong or weak.
Regarding Sensie’s UI, we relied on dark mode with high-contrast elements. This way, we emphasize the connection with science, achieving a unique style at the same time.
“Z1 really helped us tackle all our design questions in a way that left me in awe,” admits Mike. “They are a great partner who rolls up their sleeves and stays committed to the end. I’m grateful for the work we accomplished together”.
A technological bridge to connect soul and body
Sensie uses the sensors in our smartphones to measure muscular tension, which helps us identify blockages in the nervous system. Then it gives us simple practices to clear them in less than 3 minutes and tools to track our progress and well-being.
Mike explains it this way: “The app amplifies emotional intelligence by using smartphone sensors to measure how our nervous system moves in response to our thoughts, emotions, or any stimulus. By boosting emotional intelligence, we can identify specific blockages in the body and offer personalized wellness practices to expand and regain a high-performance mindset — helping us to reconnect and learn to listen to our bodies’ critical signals.”
On Sensie’s website, you can read that the product is designed to be our companion on the journey to connecting more deeply with our bodies’ intelligence. Mike’s vision is billions of people accessing deeper levels of embodied intelligence, creativity, and flow.
Sensie, recently nominated as one of the Best App Design by Design Rush, is the bridge that makes that vision possible. We are grateful to have been part of its founder’s journey, helping him fulfill his dream of building a technological bridge to connect our souls and bodies to achieve a flow state.
