Health & wellness mobile app
A US-based wellness startup needed a cross-platform mobile app that communicated with Bluetooth Low Energy health sensors. We designed and built both the app and the design system from scratch.
- Client
- Wellness startup (NDA)
- Year
- 2024
- Duration
- 20 weeks
- Practice
- Designs
§ 01Brief
The client had hardware: a BLE-enabled wellness sensor that measured sleep and stress markers. They needed a mobile app that could pair with it, display the data meaningfully, and build a habit loop that brought users back daily.
We ran design and engineering in parallel from week one — component library in Figma alongside component library in React Native. By week 6 the first sensor pairing flow was testable on real hardware.
§ 02Approach
- 01Research
Habit loop design
We ran 6 user interviews with early-access sensor owners. The data showed that users wanted progress over time, not raw metrics. We redesigned the information architecture around weekly trends, not daily numbers.
- 02Design
Design system for mobile
A token-first Figma system: 3 type scales, 2 colour modes (light/dark from day one), and 60+ components. Every screen was prototyped in Figma before a line of React Native was written.
- 03Engineering
BLE integration
React Native + a native Swift/Kotlin BLE module. The sensor protocol was undocumented — we reverse-engineered the characteristic UUIDs from the hardware team's Unity test app.
- 04Launch
TestFlight → App Store
8 weeks in TestFlight with 200 beta users. 3 iteration rounds on the onboarding flow based on completion rate data. App Store submission in week 20, approved in 48 hours.