// CalmSpace
A mental wellbeing app people actually open
An iOS and Android wellbeing app with guided exercises, mood tracking, and offline support — grown from idea to 60,000 downloads in its first six months.
// 01 — the challenge
The challenge
CalmSpace's founders had clinical expertise and a waiting list of pilot users, but no product. The wellbeing app market is crowded with beautiful apps that users abandon within a week; retention, not features, was the real problem to solve.
They also needed the app to work offline — their users often practise exercises in places with no signal, and a loading spinner is the opposite of calming.
// 02 — the solution
The solution
We built a React Native app around a deliberately small core: a daily check-in under 20 seconds, guided exercises that stream then cache for offline use, and gentle streak mechanics designed with their clinical advisor — encouragement without guilt.
Every screen was prototyped and tested with pilot users before development. Post-launch, we shipped fortnightly releases driven by retention cohorts rather than a feature wishlist.
// 03 — the results
The results
60,000 downloads in six months with a 4.8-star average across both stores. Day-30 retention runs at 2.4× the category benchmark, and the offline-first architecture keeps sessions working on the Underground — where, it turns out, a lot of breathing exercises happen.
// stack
