Hello Po — Rebecca Parvaneh

UI/UX DESIGN
Hello Po

A Meditation App for Children

ROLE
UI/UX Designer

TIMELINE
6 weeks

DELIVERABLES

Design System
UI Components
Mid + Hi-Fi Wireframes

YEAR
2025

GOAL
Hello Po invites children on a journey of inner peace and mindfulness transforming screens into serene sanctuaries. The app empowers children to cultivate mental well-being and lifelong relaxation skills.

The main task at hand involved building an engaging and intuitive UI and design system from scratch for Hello Po’s app (no existing branding was in place yet). The app design needed to balance the inclusion of vibrant animations that aided in maintaining the attention of 4-8 year olds throughout activities and exercises surrounding mindfulness, relaxation, and soothing meditations. The goal of the app is to empower children aged 4-8 to cultivate mental well-being and emotion regulation skills.

Primary Objectives

CORE PROBLEM

The app design needed to balance the inclusion of vibrant animations that aided in maintaining the attention of 4-8 year olds throughout activities and exercises surrounding mindfulness, relaxation, and soothing meditations. The goal of the app is to empower children aged 4-8 to cultivate mental well-being and emotion regulation skills.

CHALLENGES

Need to find the balance between providing a user experience that is rewarding and educational, not mindless and addicting (we do not want to gameify the app to the point that we are encouraging unhealthy tech hygiene, especially during a key developmental period).

Balancing successful cognitive usability with an enhanced emotional experience (vibrant animations) on the app to create an engaging experience for both parent and child. We need to encourage young children to practice focus and calm in a way that feels playful rather than instructional.

Children aged 4–8 have limited attention spans and often disengage from traditional mindfulness or meditation experiences that are not designed for their developmental needs.

RESEARCH

Secondary research was conducted in order to understand how the challenges listed above impacted younger users when using similar mindfulness apps and to understand which systems work and which systems break.

Research was conducted by collecting broad findings from data published in academic journals covering topics in child psychology, human-computer interaction (HCI), and user experience design.

KEY FINDINGS

Children aged 4-8 show increased engagement with colours such as blue and red (increased attention to information), yellow (enhances positive affect), and green (promotes feelings of relaxation).

Children in this age group also have varying cognitive abilities, with children aged 4 possessing a more limited working memory ability than their older counterparts (younger children respond more favourably to visual cues and simple strings of information and interactions).

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS