Sumondo

Sumondo is a stress monitoring app for adults seeking to raise awareness and suggesting relieving methods by encouraging users to incorporate meditation and breathing exercises into their daily routine.

Introduction

The users were adults between 35-65 years old who were concerned that deteriorating physical and mental health would impact their ability to live a fuller life.

The business goal was to improve activation rates. The real challenge was not usability alone, it was relevance: users did not see the app as part of their daily behavior, so it was quickly abandoned.

Framing the problem

User research found that most users already had a habit of exercising or meditating to alleviate symptoms of high stress. The opportunity was to connect the app with those routines instead of asking users to adopt an entirely new behavior.

The proposed solution

Notify users when stress levels reach sustained thresholds by suggesting breathing exercises, meditation breaks, walk trips, hydration breaks, and other actions. By connecting with existing routines, the app could become a more regular part of daily life.

An unexpected issue

Testing showed that users completed the breathing-exercise task with ease and enjoyed the follow animation, but two important issues surfaced:

• Users wanted shorter breathing exercises.
• Users found Do Not Disturb difficult to reach.

Priority revisions

Because users did not have trouble performing actions, the revision work focused on making Do Not Disturb easier to find and reducing friction around the breathing activity.

Final solution

The final direction tied stress thresholds to practical, low-friction actions. Users could receive suggestions, perform a stress-relieving exercise, and track those actions inside the app.

Where do we go from here?

The next step would be another usability test with new participants, followed by activation metrics: what percentage of users perform on-app actions, whether those users are more engaged, and how the feature impacts activation rate.