Headspace Redesign
Simplifying Headspace's search experience to make content discovery clear and stress-free.
What?
A redesign of Headspace's search experience to make meditation content easier to browse and discover.
For who?
Everyday users who felt overwhelmed by too many choices and struggles to find the right sessions quickly.
My role
End-to-end product designer responsible for research, user journey mapping, wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing.
Project duration
4 weeks
Tools
Figma
Why This Matters
Meditation apps only succeed if users can easily build and sustain habits. Headspace's existing structure buried valuable content under complex categories and navigation, which led to fatigue and drop-offs. Redesigning the experience wasn't just about improving UI, it was about helping users form lasting wellness routines.
What Users Need
A clear way to find the "right" meditation for their current mood or goal.
Less scrolling and fewer confusing categories.
A design that felt approachable and motivating rather than overwhelming.
The Solution
I created a streamlined search experience that prioritized clarity and personalization, making it easier to explore new meditations and access content that they love.
How I Did It
Research
To ground the redesign in real user needs, I analyzed Headspace's app reviews, competitor patterns, and discussions Reddit communities. Users consistently voiced frustration with cluttered navigation, difficulty finding specific meditations, and lack of clarity in session categories.
Core Challenges
Headspace is hard to navigate, preventing users from finding available content or exploring new offerings.
The current interface is too crowded with content and distracts users from engaging in mindfulness.
Users want to better informed of available content so they can choose the practice that best fits their needs.
Empathizing
Building on these insights, I developed a persona and empathy map to bring user struggles into sharper focus. A journey map highlighted moments of friction in searching for meditations. Together, these artifacts ensured my design process stayed rooted in solving real pain points rather than surface-level UI changes.
Defining the Problem
The research revealed a clear theme: users want to meditate but struggle to navigate Headspace's vast library without feeling lost or overwhelmed. To focus on the design process, I distilled these findings into a guiding question and a clear problem statement.
Problem Statement
How might we…
Establish Goals
With the problem clearly defined, I translated these insights into concrete design goals. These goals served as benchmarks throughout the redesign process, ensuring that every design decision addressed user frustrations while aligning with Headspace's mission to make meditation simple and approachable.
Informative
Create an interface that properly informs users and empower their mindfulness practice.
Efficient
Develop UI that presents clear content organization to reduce browsing time.
Tailored
Create a solution that includes content that users love and will regularly use.
Interface Analysis
Building on my research and project goals, I analyzed Headspace's existing landing and search experiences. The findings directly validated user frustrations and highlighted opportunities for redesign.
Landing Page Analysis
The landing page was cluttered and overwhelming, especially for new users.
Overlapping categories made it unclear where to begin searching.
Vague labels caused hesitation and second-guessing.
Too much content at once can be overwhelming and cause choice paralysis for users seeking focus.
Research validation: Users on Reddit described Headspace as "too busy" and difficult to navigate, echoing these interface issues.
Search Results Page Analysis
The search flow made it harder to find relevant content.
No filters or content structure made it hard for users to refine results.
Lack of previews can lead users to click blindly into sessions, slowing down discovery.
Overwhelming library with increasing amounts of content can cause frustration instead of support.
Research validation: Users wanted clearer ways to evaluate sessions before choosing, showing a stronger need for organization and upfront context.
Wireframing
With clear pain points identified through research and interface analysis, I began wireframing to test potential solutions. My goal was to reduce clutter, make navigation more intuitive, and give users the right level of context before committing to a session. These wireframes reflect early explorations of how to streamline the search experience, balancing simplicity for new users with control for experienced users.
Testing
To validate the wireframes, I built mid-fidelity prototypes and ran A/B/C testing with different landing and results page variations. The goal was to see which layouts felts the most intuitive, and why.
Search Landing
Search Results
Final Design
The final redesign resolves core navigation issues identified in research: cluttered pages, unclear metadata, and difficulty finding relevant content. By simplifying entry points and highlighting clear metadata, the experience now supports users like Carol who want to quickly locate sessions without feeling overwhelmed.
Landing Page Highlights
Personalized search chips upfront gives users confidence on where to start (direct response to confusion noted in Reddit posts and affinity map).
Popular suggestions below support exploration without distracting first-time users.
Simplified card layouts as a response to feedback that clutter made searching for sessions feel overwhelming.
Results Page Highlights
Why This Matters
For users like Carol, this redesign means less time sifting through irrelevant results and more time engaging with mindfulness content that fits their goals. It also positions Headspace as a platform that can scale its growing content library without sacrificing usability.
