I always begin with word association because that puts me in the right creative space. I immediately knew that the idea of the safety of a nest would be the project's driving force, and I wanted to make the user feel light and secure while using the app. 

I divided the concept into Mood and Nest, the two words that define the brand and also describe the app's intention.

Mood
feelings
emotions
vibes
enery
happy
sad
anxious
stressed
calm Nest
security
nurture
home
safety
birds
nature
eggs
flight
family

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User Profiles

After viewing sample user profiles, I noticed threads woven through the Pain Points and Goals. I saw from the profiles that the overarching theme was wanting a straightforward app that didn’t overwhelm. I tried to focus on a clean, minimal interface that wasn’t confusing and gave the user autonomy in how they engaged with the app. Given that this is an app for mental health, I immediately understood the need for a calm-inducing experience that allows users to organize their thoughts that may otherwise feel chaotic or disorganized.

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Logo Design and Color Story

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Onboarding

When it came to the design, I wanted a lot of well-organized, clean lines placed on a sky blue backdrop. I also wanted the design to be intuitive and ultimately familiar. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel because the app's goal is for the user to feel calm and safe. With a straightforward design layout, the user could focus on the app's function instead of its form. I wanted a friendly copy for the onboarding stages that established the app’s primary functions.

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Login/Signup/Dashboard

The Login/Signup pages and main Dashboard were developed to be clear and concise. I wanted an uncluttered experience and an effortless dashboard. Dashboards can often become a hub of confusing functions or jumbled design elements, so I preferred to focus my efforts on a “less is more” approach and keep things as minimal as possible. 

This section was very fun to create. I knew I wanted the Mood section of the app to bring some levity and fun while remaining familiar. I focused on an emoji-style categorization system to help people chart and log their moods into the system. I wanted a monthly and weekly log where users could refer back to their weekly notes in their daily mood log. The month summary shows how frequently the user logged each mood on an easy-to-interpret scale. Seeing how often a user chose a specific mood would be an essential piece of data for the user to have about their overall mood.

For the Nest section, I wanted to use the “nest” branding in a way that could become unique to the app. I was thinking of how “tweeting” became a word affiliated with Twitter (R.I.P.) so much so that even when it changed to X, people still refer to the act of posting on X as “tweeting.” I thought “nesting” could become a similar word for the MoodNest app. There are many other journaling apps out there, so to refer to this section as “journaling” just felt like a missed opportunity for carving out something unique for the brand. In this section, I wanted the journal to be separate from the Mood tracking and something people could use as a personal journal of thoughts. I think the risk of attaching the mood logging to this section is that it creates too narrow a focus and becomes an extension of the mood tracking instead of something individually worthy of its own space within the app. This way, if someone wasn’t really into tracking their moods, they could still have a good reason to use the app.

For the Menu section, I wanted to keep things relatively clean and straightforward. I didn’t want there to be too much for the user to navigate here, and just wanted a simple space where users could share their feedback and some simple settings that they could toggle on or off.