Meditation apps have been increasingly influential within the mindfulness industry; they offer simple, low friction routes into mindfulness practices. However, the mass adoption of meditation apps is having a profound impact on the practice — more and more people are identifying with meditation as an activity which is done alone with their smartphone. This project aimed to identify and understand business viable innovation opportunities within the mindfulness space that promote social forms of meditation and go beyond the ‘guided meditation app.’

As a project part-funded by Innovate UK, this was also framed as a capability development challenge, with the goal of upskilling the Mindfulness Everywhere team in early-stage design, while also helping them build out a cycle of thinking around medium to long-term innovation opportunities.

Mindfulness Everywhere is a creative studio working at the intersection of design, technology, and meditation. They are best known for Buddhify, a meditation app designed to fit into a busy modern lifestyle, but they have also produced a range of other products such as Kara, Sleepfulness and Meditation Now.

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Mindfulness Everywhere is a creative studio working at the intersection of design, technology, and meditation. They are best known for Buddhify, a meditation app designed to fit into a busy modern lifestyle, but they have also produced a range of other products such as Kara, Sleepfulness and Meditation Now.

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Research Overview
In-Depth Research Documentation

Using a mixture of desk and field research techniques, including social probes, user interviews, and first-hand observation, we developed an understanding of the key groups of people who engage in mindfulness. Across these groups, we built a robust understanding of people’s journeys towards and into mindfulness identifying how and why they first engaged with mindfulness, how their relationship with mindfulness evolved over time, and the key drivers and pain points on these journeys.

While the research phase concluded with a large body of insight, there were a few key learnings which emerged:

• Meditation apps are an attractive entry point
  Especially when approaching mindfulness after periods of self-help mindfulness apps are the most accessible and attractive point of entry into meditation — for instance, they allow someone to meditate at home in their pyjamas, without needing to emotionally open up to others.
  
  
• Beyond the App
  At some point, most people find that guided audio meditation apps aren’t satisfying their needs and start looking ‘beyond the app’. This is usually due to finishing the content in the app or wanting to connect with others they can share their practice with.
  
  
• The Leap of Faith
  Moving from the security of meditating on your own in the safety of your home (using apps), to meditating with strangers in an unfamiliar space (attending classes or retreats) is a huge leap and few offerings exist to ease this journey.

Based on these learnings, we developed a series of design opportunities. These were then refined by developing and testing some low fidelity product and service concepts.