La Playa

A mobile app designed for mindfulness and meditation practices to help foster peace and enhance daily focus.

La Playa is a mobile app designed to help users incorporate mindfulness and meditation practices into daily life, with a focus on promoting peace and enhancing focus. La Playa provides users, especially beginner yogis, with a variety of activities to encourage consistent, mindful habits.

Challenge

La Playa was born from a discussion about the challenges of staying motivated and engaged in mindfulness practice. Although resources exist, many are not intuitive or engaging for beginners. La Playa's goal is to create an accessible, engaging experience that fosters daily mindfulness.

How might we allow beginner yogis to easily learn more about mindfulness and meditation while encouraging them to build healthy, consistent practices and habits?

Objectives

  • Develop a user-friendly, intuitive digital experience for mindfulness.

  • Offer a variety of meditation practices and activities for users at any level.

Research

Mindfulness has seen substantial growth, with 14.2% of adults now practicing regularly—a threefold increase since 2012. Research focused on:

  • User motivations and challenges in maintaining consistent practices.

  • Exploration features for beginners.

  • Competitive analysis to identify gaps and strengths in current mindfulness apps.

User interviews & insights

Through interviews, we gathered insights into user needs:

  • The desire for diverse, engaging content.

  • Priority on ease of use and accessibility.

  • Sensitivity to affordability.

What are existing resources?

An analysis of popular meditation apps revealed that most include breathwork and sleep stories to foster calmness. However, La Playa aims to differentiate by prioritizing variety, ease, and affordability to better serve its audience.

The competitive analysis allowed me to see what was currently being offered while the user interviews gave a better understanding of who my overall users were, what they typically looked for, and how they might potentially use a newer mindfulness app if presented. I then focused on turning those findings into visualizations that would help me define the product. 

Feature Prioritization

Based on research findings, we focused on features that support La Playa’s mission:

  • Progress tracking for habit reinforcement.

  • Diverse meditation practices and in-app exercises.

  • Personalized daily check-ins for added user connection.

Design and Prototype

Designed to simplify navigation, key screens were sketched to align with core tasks.  

La Playa wir eframes

Visuals

Mindful of peace and calm, the design incorporates navy blue and neutral colors to promote serenity. Smooth transitions and bottom navigation enhance ease of movement, while the "Explore" page is structured for intuitive browsing. 

Prototype and testing

Usability testing on the high-fidelity prototype highlighted the importance of an organized "Explore" page, leading to improved labels and simplified navigation.

User Focus: Testing revealed a strong user preference for seamless exploration, reinforcing the need for intuitive navigation.

Future Iterations: La Playa’s design process confirmed that the mindfulness space is evolving, presenting future research opportunities to refine personalization features.

Outcome and takeaways

Reflection

This project emphasized the importance of organization in prioritizing user needs and aligning with research insights. Creating La Playa underscored the value of personalization, even in a scalable product, and the need for structured planning to guide development.