Understandingthe challenge
Industry
- Health and wellbeing
- Mental health
- Workplace wellbeing
Platform
- Mobile
Services
- Discovery
- UX design
- Brand and identity
- Mobile development
- Backend development
- QA and testing
Most mental-health support arrives at the point of crisis. Myndr’s idea was to get in earlier: a safe, anonymous place where someone could notice their own patterns, learn coping skills and follow a plan before things got that far, with their employer paying for access. The founders had spent a year listening to people living with poor mental health, the people who care for them, and the employers who wanted to help but did not know how. The need was well understood. The product did not exist.
And this is not a market where you ship something half-right and fix it later. If people are going to tell an app how they feel, every part of it has to earn their trust first.
We started in a room with the founders, breaking a broad idea down to what a first build needed. Personas, competitor research, MoSCoW prioritisation and an onboarding flow came out of that day, and the nice-to-haves went to one side.
Then we built the product one part at a time, and put each part in front of real people before moving to the next. Onboarding came first, with an employer sign-up code and a clear consent flow, as a beta on iOS and Android. A mood log followed, tracking how someone felt and what was behind it over time, with the tracker designs tested side by side. Action plans came next, across nine themes from anxiety and sleep to loneliness and financial wellbeing, each one built, trialled and reworked. A library of text, video and audio sat behind them, and a suggestion layer offered a person’s next action based on what they had logged.
The psychological content was grounded in CBT and ACT and checked against NICE guidance with mental-health professionals. We designed the brand, type and illustration system alongside the product, and in the final phase the app went through a structured testing programme with Teesside University: security, accessibility, devices, load and the logic behind the suggestions.
You cannot move fast and break things in mental health. Every part of Myndr was built, put in front of real people and reworked before we moved on to the next. That is slower, and it is the only honest way to build something people are meant to trust with how they feel.
What the grant delivered
The grant did what R&D funding is for. Myndr went from an idea to a designed, built and tested product for iOS and Android, with real people’s feedback shaping every cycle.
What it left us with is a way of working in a trust-first space: consent, anonymity and getting the content right come before pace, and you test each part with the people it is for before you build the next.
Understand first
A year of listening before the build, and a workshop that cut the idea down to what a first version needed.
Trial each part
Onboarding, mood log, action plans and content, each built, tested with real people and reworked before the next.
Clinically grounded
Content built on CBT and ACT and checked against NICE guidance, then tested for security, accessibility and resilience.
