Crafting the Visual Style for an Apple Design Award-Winning App

2020

Sr. Product Designer

Visual UI Design · Visual Concept · Research · Animations

Year

My role

Team

Scope

+48

The Loóna app was created by the authors of MSQRD, which allows you to apply masks to real-time videos. MSQRD bought Facebook with an estimated purchase amount of $40-70 million.

Product Overview

About Loóna founders

Loóna is a unique mixture of color therapy, sound ambiance, and storytelling that helps to let go of daily fuss and get a better night’s rest.

What is a Loóna?

Later, the team members, having fulfilled all their obligations to Facebook, left the company, creating a new project — Loóna. Loóna is a venture startup.

My Role and
Challenge

My Role

Gathering a founder's vision, refine and rethinking the visual for a new global launch

Challenge

I was the IC Senior Product Designer working on the mobile product right after the MVP version by strategizing, conceptualizing, tone of product voice, designing, and delivering the hand-offs to the developers.

The current app design doesn’t reflect all the content Loóna offers (e.g. sounds, sleepscapes) and hence results in weak engagement/retention with the users

Turn Loóna into a lifestyle brand with a variety of immersive content used by the user every day.

Problem statment

The mission

To recreate Loóna's brand from scratch and, as a result, integrate it into the app.

The strategy

Create a new competitive application style by engaging a new audience and increasing the retention of the current users to the new app.

The goal

Discovery

Quantitative research

I analyzed the current onboarding funnel. I clarified the business question - where should users come back to? Furthermore, I identified which pages need high retention (where the highest value for the user is in the application). I then focused on redesigning these landing pages.

Competitor research

Defined common user patterns/behavior on health and fitness apps.
Focus on apps:

The results of discovery

MAU in App ~ 120k. New audience — users who encountered sleep problems and sought solutions.

Our audience

The maximum goal is to increase brand awareness. We will measure through proxy metrics - the number of articles, interviews, and the totality of the brand awareness metric. The minimum goal is to increase the retention rate and MAU.

Success criteria

Current retention ~25% (non subscribed), Target ~35%

MAU in App ~ 600k

My first efforts

In my initial and subsequent efforts, I aimed to craft a UI design reminiscent of competitors such as Headspace, Calm, and Reflectly, while preserving the emotional tone conveyed through coloration.

Visual attempt

Additionally, I focused on improving the main screen's features, prioritizing the most important elements for user interaction and engagement.

Rethinking the main screen

Back to MVP concept

I decided to stop trying to create a new design and focus on the previous version of the application.

Inspired by movies and games, I decided to take a new approach to redesigning the main card

New brand

During our redesign, our team joined Branding Designer Alex. He started responding for branding.

New blood

We ultimately decided on a simpler approach: a small character, a girl, with a clear and straightforward design. Though she hails from another planet, she exudes simplicity, casting a gentle glow that guides one to quick relaxation and a peaceful sleep. The team found this choice delightful.

Selected brand

Alex prepared three versions of the branded style.
We wanted to choose the style that suits for the sub-Loóna Brand (e.g. Loóna Family, or Loóna Kids) and use that in the future.

Three version of branding

The second and third concepts revolved around extraterrestrial characters designed to assist in facilitating deep sleep after a hectic day. However, we ultimately opted against these ideas due to their intricate visual designs. We felt that such visuals might become outdated and not in line with a modern aesthetic.

Branding integration

I decided to stop trying to create a new design and focus on the previous version of the app. I refreshed the main screen and made it more interactive.

We made a decision to explore a more dynamic approach for the main card

The soundscape is a popular format that allows humans to experience different atmospheric sounds within a specific area. An example of this is nature soundscapes.

One of the entities on the main screen was soundscapes, which need to be refined.

Soundscapes

Sleepscapes are immersive color scenes that allow you to color and listen to a story while enjoying the time and relaxing atmosphere.

Sleepscapes concept

Final design

I was pleased with the outcome of combining the old Loóna style with the new neon branding

Our final design was inspired by the atmosphere of calmness and carefree relaxation after a hard day's work.

In search of a perfect design solution, I opted for simplicity and clarity, while still adding some emotional elements to the design. I believe that a dynamic interface is essential to provide a pleasant user experience.

Stay on a simple

50+ concepts