Meditating with Calm

Usability on the mindfulness and meditating app

Mt. Mckinley and Wonder Lake by Ansel Adams

I’ve recently “closed my eyes and fell in love” (yes, quite literally) with Calm, a meditation app aimed to helping one relax, focus, and sleep better.

Wondering how this fresh breathe of clarity and magic came to be, I’m analyzing Calm’s usability for Designlab.

Usability: How easy and pleasant features are to use

I’m going for the gold and diving straight into dissecting Calm, using five essential usability principles:

Learnability

Starting with the logo, I already sensed a strong brand identity with the app.

Google defines calm (noun) as “the absence of violent or confrontational activity within a place or group”.

I mentally associate the word calm as a specific, releasing feeling, a place of serenity, and an experience of tranquility. Being aware of this, I had assumed and expected the app to reflect the brand’s name and logo.

Calm user flow (from left to right): Home Screen, Profile, Scenes, Music, Meditate, Sleep Stories

Very simple, beautiful, and clean interface — just as I imagined calm would look and feel like. It resonated with my assumptions and expectations.

I was greeted by a visually interactive landscape on the home screen, and accompanied by relevant audible sound effects for that landscape as well. Wanting to play with the app more (and with simple curiosity), I used my right index finger to swipe right. Lo and behold the landscape changed, with matching visuals and audible sound effects to accompany it.

But how did I know this? How did I assume and expect something to happen when I swiped right during my first encounter with the app? I think it has to do with the feel (UX) and aesthetic (UI) of the app’s design — making it easily learnable for me to use without really thinking. It also might have to do with the fact that I’ve used so many apps now, it’s become a naturally subconscious habit to swipe right/left.

Swipe right, and landscape interfaces will change, with matching visuals and audible sound effects. Middle screen is an option that allows removal of the interface icons when you press once on the screen.

Another interactive feature of the app I like is the guided meditation breathing program for relaxation, Breathe.

Breathe interacts with the user by showing an enlarged circle when one “breathes in”. The circle pauses at “hold” ending the cycle of breathe with a reduced circle when one “breathes out”.

This simple and effective interface got the job done for me — without having me to really sit and think about using the feature. The app mostly narrowed down all my basic needs for meditation, making it very easy for me to navigate with.

Efficiency

I have used Calm a number of times since my discovery of the app, and I would say it does what it says it does: a meditation app aimed to helping one relax, focus, and sleep better. I’ve used it both for meditation purposes and sleeping purposes. I haven’t played with the Sleep Stories section as much, but I have played with the Meditations, Scenes, and Music and those features have assisted me in falling asleep.

Memorability

Calm’s calendar feature makes it easy for me to track and navigate through my meditation history.

Meditation is a self-discipline on its own, and I used to meditate every day and recently fell off the wagon. Recently jumping back on the wagon and since discovering the app, I noticed how Calm’s calendar feature makes it easy for me to navigate back and see when I last meditated and also logs in my past meditations with data history. Prior to the using the app, I used to log in my meditations by hand, using classic pen and paper. Life changing? Yes.

Errors

Gently swipe right on a meditation log, and the app gives me an option to delete it.

Let’s say I accidentally clicked on a meditation option feature, and I actually didn’t meditate that day. But the app still logged in that meditation in my data history and “made it count”. I can go back to the history log and delete it, which helps me stay true to my meditation rituals.

Satisfaction

How pleasant was it for me when using the app? I would relate my overall feedback on this topic to how the product made me feel.

Calm served its purpose. It provided me a sense of stillness, relaxation, and peace.

So my overall satisfaction?

Simply divine.

I’m keeping an eye out for your future products, calm.com.

♡♡♡