CLIENT

The Mindfulness App

YEAR

2024

SCOPE OF WORK

App Design

Design System

stack

industry

B2C

Health Care

Mental Wellness

Habit-building

Personal Development

Redesigning the Onboarding Flow to Boost Retention & Engagement

Redesigning the Onboarding Flow to Boost Retention & Engagement

The Mindfulness App is one of the pioneers in digital meditation and mental well-being — trusted by a global community of users seeking calm, clarity, and deeper connection. With a mission to help people live in greater harmony with themselves and the world around them, it offers guided meditations, daily mindfulness tools, and self-development content.

As Head of Design, I led a complete redesign of the onboarding experience — transforming a dated and fragmented flow into a clear, engaging, and brand-aligned journey that dramatically improved user retention and trial conversion 🌿📱

🚧 The Challenge

Outdated and unstructured flow

The previous onboarding lacked a clear structure and narrative. Each screen existed in isolation, without a guiding purpose or user-centric logic behind the sequence.

Weak brand alignment

The onboarding experience didn’t reflect the tone, feel, or visual language of the brand — leading to a disconnect between what users saw and the app’s actual value.

Poor hierarchy and readability

Key information was lost due to confusing layouts, unrefined typography, and missing visual cues — making it hard for users to understand what to expect from the app.

Missed opportunity for engagement

Without thoughtful interaction design or progression cues, many users dropped off early — missing the opportunity to get hooked during their first experience with the app.

🧭 My Approach

🔍 Discovery & research

I started by mapping the existing user journey to uncover friction points in the current onboarding. A competitor analysis followed, focusing on both direct and indirect apps in the mindfulness space. This helped us identify patterns, missed opportunities, and industry best practices.

🧠 Ideation & flow design

Using insights from research, I restructured the onboarding into clear sections: welcome, setup, walkthrough and benefits. We sketched out flow variations and wireframed multiple options to visualize the revised journey before moving into high-fidelity prototype.

🛠 Tools & collaboration

All concepts were developed in Figma — serving as a single source of truth. Collaboration with team was streamlined via both Figma and Asana, ensuring alignment between design, product, and development.

🔁 Validation & iteration

Feedback loops played a major role. Iterative reviews with stakeholders helped shape and refine decisions. I also conducted A/B tests and used analytics (e.g., Amplitude) to measure how new changes influenced behavior and retention.

The Solution

The new onboarding experience was designed to be clear, warm, guided, and user-centric — transforming a previously disjointed flow into one that felt purposeful, intuitive, and aligned with the brand.

🎯 Clear structure with intentional flow

I divided the onboarding into logical segments: a welcoming introduction, survey and user setup (preferences and notifications), benefits and a walkthrough. This gave the experience a clear beginning, middle, and end — while reducing cognitive load.

🔤 Improved layout, typography & hierarchy

Key design elements like consistent spacing, text hierarchy, and readability were fine-tuned. We added visual indicators (like progress markers) to reduce uncertainty and increase perceived control.

🧱 Aligned with the Design System

Although the design system was still evolving, I worked in parallel to expand and apply reusable components, helping set foundational design standards for the product moving forward.

📈 Progressive profiling

Rather than asking everything upfront, we implemented a progressive profiling approach — collecting essential user info over time to personalize the experience without friction.

📊 The Impact

The redesigned onboarding didn’t just look better — it performed better across key product metrics.

🚀 Increased Engagement & Completion Rates

Despite being longer than the previous version, the new onboarding flow saw a higher percentage of users completing it — and doing so with greater clarity and intent.

📉 Reduced Churn & Improved Retention

With a more thoughtful first-time experience, early churn dropped and retention improved. More users stayed long enough to understand the value of the app.

💬 Positive Internal & External Feedback

The team praised the user-first approach. The CPO described the work as “solution-oriented” and “always aligned with our business goals.”
Externally, users shared reviews like:

“The onboarding flow of this app is seamless. They provide the right amount of information about the application and how to use its features.”

🔄 Influence Beyond Onboarding

The onboarding redesign influenced other product areas — notably the app’s core “stress test” feature, which adopted similar UX thinking and component logic.

🤝 About working with me

Joe did an amazing job. He brought a solution-oriented mindset, coupled with a super user-focused design approach and always aligned with our business goals.

Joe did an amazing job. He brought a solution-oriented mindset, coupled with a super user-focused design approach and always aligned with our business goals.

Joe did an amazing job. He brought a solution-oriented mindset, coupled with a super user-focused design approach and always aligned with our business goals.

Founder & CPO @ Reflective Technologies

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