UX Mindfulness App
Bailey: Paws and Reflect
About the App
Bailey: Paws and Reflect is a mental health app created to motivate anyone and everyone to practice mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness can be intimidating because there are so many ways to go about it. My goal was to create a fun way for people to experiment with various methods of mindfulness to find what works best for them. I created four categories of practices: audio, physical, visual, and creative.
The audio section would allow for recordings of people leading guided meditations, ASMR, meditation through music, and other similar practices. The physical section would include nature walks, yoga, dancing, and more. The visual section would cover landscapes out a vehicle window, ripples in a pond, and other soothing scenes that allow your mind to focus or wander how you see fit. The creatives section would allow for journaling, coloring, photography and more to push your brain to think from a new perspective.
Explore the Prototype
Click play on the accompanying photo to explore the app yourself!
This version of the project was displayed in the Phenomenologies of Mental Health, Well-Being, and Flourishing Art Installation that took place at Lehigh University's Mountaintop campus.
Motivation and
Character Creation
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It was important to me that the app invited user participation through exposure to mindfulness techniques rather than deter people who were already skeptical of mindfulness practices. I had just discovered an app called Finch in which you care for a little bird in order to care for yourself, and that ended up serving as a major inspiration for this project. I really connected with the idea of a character motivating you on this journey, or better yet, living it with you. I did some research on what animals connected most closely with the idea of mental health and emotional support, and found a connection to sloths and dogs.
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Dogs have been known to match the mental state of their owners and reflect the emotions that their humans are experiencing. I saw the energy of a puppy, and the motivation to grow together, to be the perfect companion for my project concept. Some research showed Irish wolfhounds, English bulldogs, and Labrador retrievers to be good supporters for mental health.
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After developing sketches, I scanned the images into Adobe Illustrator and used the “image trace” feature to gather a stronger sense of the character. I decided to go with the Labrador Retriever and used the pen tool to trace over the image trace. I created each feature as a different layer and began testing each color of the palette I had chosen with different features of the dog.
Color Theory Research
Researching color theory and the color schemes of other mental health apps allowed me to find direction for my app. The Manchester Color-Wheel study had participants labeling colors as positive, neutral, or negative, and on this scale, pink, purple, and blue tended to always fall in the neutral or positive realm.
Eventually, in an attempt to try to bring my new character to life, I started applying gradients to its different features, and saw that the similarities in color choices had the ability to really give the character dimension. This discovery was what allowed this project to click for me.
Character Illustrations
I created a version of Bailey with different features and expressions to represent each mindfulness category within the app. For the audio section, I knew that I wanted Bailey’s ear to be perked up, showing her ability to be actively listening, and for the guided meditation, I knew that I wanted her to inhale and exhale with the user and the audio. I started with the base of what I already created and made simple adjustments such as moving the gradients on the stomach and closing Bailey’s eyes so that the character had the illusion of inhaling and exhaling. After gathering these assets, I prototyped animations of Bailey’s actions through Figma components.
App Features
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![The prototyping of different feeling-log displays.]()
Emotional Check-In
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![Screen for the prototyping of a friendly dog chat bot.]()
Chat with Bailey
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![The prototyping of the categories carousel that is displayed on the home screen of the app.]()
Opening Carousel
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![The prototyping of photography, creative writing, and destination in-app activities.]()
Interactive In-App Activities
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![Examples of how the dog mascot would move in different activities within the app.]()
Mascot Animations
In Conclusion
This project concept is something that I really fell in love with throughout the process of working on it. Initially, the biggest challenge I faced with this project was timing. However, I was able to return to this project a year after its original creation for an art installation. This allowed me the opportunity to rearrange my initial layout, experiment with more depth in the visual language of the app, and work through challenges with prototyping to allow people to get a full sense of what Bailey: Paws and Reflect is all about. I believe a project is never complete, so in the future, I would still love the ability to create more illustrations and animations of Bailey herself, such as her actually walking in an AR setting through the nature walk feature.