( By Munawar Khel / Day One Technologies / 2017–22 / 2 min read )
SOS Method
Positioned as "meditation reinvented", SOS Method is built for the moment of stress rather than for a daily habit you have to maintain.
Pitch, not delivered
Generated schematic, not a screenshot. Real imagery to follow.
( The pitch )
The proposition
Positioned as "meditation reinvented", SOS Method is built for the moment of stress rather than for a daily habit you have to maintain. Onboarding sells three ideas in sequence: help when you need it most in only five minutes a day, a distinctive content formula of music, tones, words, and white space, and compounding benefit from repetition. The business model is an explicit freemium subscription, with most of the library visibly locked until the user upgrades.
Design direction
The most visually aggressive pitch in the set, and deliberately unlike the calm blue-and-beige convention of the meditation category. Bold full-bleed portrait photography of people mid-stress is overlaid with a neon mint duotone mask on coral and pink grounds, paired with a handwritten script logotype. Content cards switch to dark, smoky imagery. The effect sells meditation as something urgent and modern rather than serene, which is the entire positioning argument.
What was designed
- Splash with the script logotype and the positioning line over a teal-to-red gradient
- Three-screen onboarding carousel with skip and scroll affordances and a final call to action
- Categories library with favourites and filter controls, an unlocked Quick Start introduction card, and locked programme cards carrying padlocks, each with a name and a short irreverent descriptor
- Programme catalogue spanning stress, sleep, love and relationships, health and vitality, fear, anxiety and depression, and kids and teens
- Programme detail with a play control, programme name and description, and multi-part pagination
- Quick Start with Programs, Meditation, and Tools tabs, a start control, a swipe-through hint, and a Subscribe and Unlock call to action
- Subscription paywall listing entitlements (entire collection, daily inspiration, extended sleep meditations including ASMR, offline mode) with monthly and yearly pricing, a Most Popular flag on the annual plan, and Restore Purchase
- Scene selection for the player, choosing an ambient backdrop applied to a session
What it demonstrates
Subscription and freemium UX done properly: the locked state is designed as part of the browsing experience rather than bolted on, and the paywall argues entitlements rather than just listing prices. Also a strong example of deliberately breaking a category's visual conventions to differentiate a product in a crowded market.
The full record
- Timeline
- November 2017 – April 2022
- Platform
- Mobile (iOS)
- Category
- Health and wellness, mindfulness, subscription content
- Status
- Pitch, not delivered
Tools Framer