Mobile Wellness Product for Outdoor-Led Mental Health
Client
Mindtrek
Scope
Mindful Mountain Trail
Dr. Emily Carter, PhD
Nature-Based Mental Health
Good morning, Alex
Weekly Outdoor Time
Three days in. Your habit is taking root.
What's on your mind?
Find inner space and reflection
Treks for you
Good morning, Alex
Weekly Outdoor Time
Three days in. Your habit is taking root.
What's on your mind?
Find inner space and reflection
Treks for you
Pick a focus
01:30
Time outdoors
5 day streak
Habit taking root
Wellness apps die at the second session. The first launch is easy: a tutorial, a streak that hasn't started, the optimism of a new habit. The second session is where intent meets gravity, and most products lose the user there. Mental health outcomes don't accrue from one walk; they accrue from the fortieth.
Mindtrek came to us with a clear thesis backed by clinical research: pair short outdoor movement with structured psychological prompts and you get measurable improvements in mood, focus, and sleep. They had the science, the partnerships with credentialed practitioners, and a beta audience that loved the idea. What they needed was a product experience that made the second, fifth, and fortieth walks feel earned, not guilt-driven.
A three-surface product that turns walks into a sustained mental-health practice
We designed end-to-end product infrastructure across three connected surfaces. Each one is responsible for a different stage of the habit loop.
Daily Walk. Short, focus-first sessions. Users pick what they need (Clarity, Stress Relief, Energy, Mood Lift) before the timer starts, converting goal-anxiety into immediate use.
Weekly Outdoor Time. A progress dial and streak system tuned to intrinsic motivation. No badges, no shame. Just a clear sense that the work is accumulating.
Treks. Curated outdoor trails with audio guidance from credentialed mental-health practitioners. The bridge from streak-keeping to long-term wellness practice.
Product architecture
One habit loop, three surfaces.
Onset
Daily Walk
Pick a focus, step outside, the timer takes over.
Reinforcement
Weekly Outdoor Time
Streak + progress dial that accumulates without nagging.
Mindful Mountain Trail
5.4 mi · 1h 10m · led by Dr. Emily Carter, PhD
Depth
Treks
Curated trails with audio guidance from credentialed practitioners.
Each Trek deepens the practice, and tomorrow's Daily Walk feels easier for it.
App Store
across iOS & Android
Retention
Day-30, 3.4× benchmark
Engagement
median session length
Mapped the gap between intent and the second session
Most wellness apps optimise for the install. We started one session deeper, cataloguing every friction point between 'I want to walk again tomorrow' and 'I just walked again'. The product is shaped end-to-end around removing those frictions, not around adding new features.
Treated the post-walk summary as the most important screen
It's the screen users see right before they put the phone away. We built it to do three jobs at once: celebrate the moment, advance the streak visibly, and quietly tee up the next session. No CTAs that beg, no notifications that nag. The next walk is implied by what just finished.
Bound the brand to the practice, not the product
Mindtrek doesn't compete with screen time. It competes with sitting down. The visual system (sage greens, contour-line motifs, restrained motion) was designed to feel like the place you're going, not the device you're holding. Every micro-interaction was tuned against that test.
Validated with real walkers across six rounds
Six rounds of moderated user testing across age groups, fitness levels, and prior mental-health-app experience. Every round revealed something we'd assumed wrong. The shipped product carries 100+ hours of direct user feedback, and it shows in the retention numbers.
Turn walks into short resets.
Start with a Daily Walk.
Daily Walk
CLARITYDaily Walk
STRESS RELIEFDaily Walk
ENERGYThree days in. Your habit is taking root.
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Ship the product on screen one.
By screen four the user has picked a focus, seen their streak, and started a Daily Walk. No tutorial, no empty states.
Design decisions
- Tap-through, not skip-through
- First walk is screen one, not screen seven
- Auth happens after the product has been used
Let's talk about what's next
Tell us where you're headed and what's in the way.
You'll get a concrete take, not a sales pitch.
Connect
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