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01Case study · Mental health & growth

Sprout

Helping people see the growth they can't quite feel.

Sprout started as a mood tracker for therapy clients. Two pivots and a lot of listening later, it became a quiet reflection companion — one that reveals growth through seasons and stories instead of scores and streaks.

Try the prototypeRead the story
Sprout home and journey screens shown on two phones
Role
UI/UX Designer
Duration
16 days
Timeline
One day + one week sprint
Tools
Figma, Chatgpt, Figma Make
Industry
Healthtech · Mental Health
Platform
Mobile (iOS / Android)
Team
Solo

02The Challenge

How do you know you're becoming a better person?

not happier
not productive
not successful

How do you know you have actually grown? The question stayed with me for months before it became a product.

The Sprout mascot, a small seedling character sitting in a terracotta pot

Millions of people try every day — books, habits, journalling, meditation, therapy. Almost none of them can answer whether it's working.

Growth is slow, messy, non-linear and mostly invisible. That combination is brutal: the moment you most need proof that you're changing is the moment change is hardest to see.

03Wrong Assumptions

I was confident. I was also wrong.

Before talking to anyone, I had already decided what the product was. Writing those assumptions down is the only reason I could later notice them collapse.

Assumption 01

This is a mental health tracking problem

I framed it around mood and therapy.

Assumption 02

Progress can be measured

Log a mood, score a week, plot a line. If the line goes up, you're growing.

04Research

I stopped designing and started researching

I took expert opinion and consulted a therapist.

Video call screenshot from a therapist interview for the Sprout case study
Therapist interview — understanding how progress is actually noticed inside sessions.

05The Pivot

The problem was never measurement. It was visibility.

People weren't failing to grow. They were failing to notice that they had.

The sentence that redirected the project

“Progress is a quality metric.”

THE THERAPIST, MID-INTERVIEW

Therapists don't look at scores — they listen for how someone talks about their week compared to three months ago. The sign of growth was never in the number. It was in the way people expressed themselves.

06First Prototype

An AI chat that tracked your progress

The idea
Conversation as the interface — talk, and Sprout notices the change.
Why it failed
Testers read the chat window as therapy. The goal of the app stopped being legible the moment it opened.
Sprout AI chat introducing itself to the userSprout chat surfacing earlier reflections as evidence of growthPaper sketch of the Chat with AI screenSprout home screen with the plant companionProgress screen showing a grown sunflower and past milestonesPaper sketch of the Your Journey timeline screen

07USABILITY TESTING

Everyone thought it was a therapy app ( which it was not )

Every session was run remotely, recorded, and turned into one concrete change.

Participant reviewing a Sprout prototype screen during a session
Walking a participant through the reflection flow.

Insights I got

  1. 01

    FEEDBACK

    Users thought it was a therapy app.

  2. 02

    FEEDBACK

    A plant couldn't represent non-linear growth.

  3. 03

    FEEDBACK

    Some people don't enjoy writing (Onboarding screens)

08PROTOTYPE · FINAL ROUND

Changes I brought in the final prototype

Research said progress lives in how people describe their week. So the second prototype dropped the therapist layer and changed the conversation interface into a journal interface.

Primary interface

Problem
The chat surface made Sprout feel like a therapy app.
Decision
Remove chat, return to a quiet journaling canvas with optional prompts.
Result
The purpose of the app is clear on open — an invitation, not a conversation.
Before — the chat interface with the Sprout companion1st Prototype
After — a calm reflection prompt with optional startersFinal prototype

Growth Progress

Seven seasons of growth

Seven seasons instead of one growing plant.

The single hardest decision in the project: finding a metaphor that could hold a bad month without calling it a setback. Not seven separate states — one connected ecosystem you move through, and return to.

Reflection Forest

Seven seasons. One continuous journey.

Growth isn't linear. Some seasons are quiet, some are messy, and some help you bloom. Wherever you are, you're still growing.

A tiny sprout emerging from rich soil in morning sunlight, with soft glowing particles

Beginning

Something is starting, even if it's unclear.

The first small intention, before there is anything to show for it.

A calm still lake with drifting clouds, floating leaves and small plants at the shore

Quiet

Little is happening on the surface.

Stillness that is easy to mistake for standing still.

Purple rain clouds over wet earth with gentle rainfall, soft lightning and bent leaves

Storm

Hard weeks. Not failure — weather.

The season people apologise for, and the one that changes the most.

Fresh soil with falling leaves circling above and tiny sprouts emerging again

Reset

Letting go of what stopped working.

Leaves fall so the same soil can hold something else.

A healthy flourishing plant with fresh leaves, tiny flowers and butterflies in warm sunlight

Growing

Small, steady, unglamorous progress.

Momentum that only becomes obvious in hindsight.

Pink blossoms opening in golden sunlight with butterflies drifting between them

Bloom

The work becomes visible.

Not an arrival — a season that opens, and later closes again.

A large mature tree with healthy roots and birds in warm golden afternoon light

Flourishing

Living the change without effort.

Deep roots, wide canopy, and still weather to come.

Swipe — the vine keeps going

Seasons are not levels.

You can move forward, pause, or revisit any season. Every season shapes you. Every season matters.

Non-linear

You can move in any direction.

Personal

Your journey is uniquely yours.

Continuous

Every season adds to your story.

Meaningful

Every moment helps you grow.

Nobody graduates from one season into the next.

They revisit. They pause. They start again in soil they've already used. Sprout was built so that returning to a season you thought you'd left reads as being human — not as falling behind.

10Reflection companion

A companion that grows with you.

Not a therapist. Not advice. Not a diagnosis. Sprout notices patterns, and hands them back to you as a story you recognise.

The philosophy

A reflection companion built on seasons

Reflection-first. No score, no streak, no advice. The plant became a landscape that moves through seasons, so a hard week reads as weather instead of failure.

The Sprout mascot smiling
  1. 1

    You write

    Share what's on your mind — text or voice, as long or short as you like.

  2. 2

    Sprout notices

    It reads between the lines for small signs of change over time.

  3. 3

    Sprout connects

    It links patterns, themes and moments into something coherent.

  4. 4

    You look back

    You see the distance travelled, and feel more grounded in it.

11Final experience

The finished product, in the order you meet it.

Arrive, be noticed, look back — the polished screens arranged along the journey a real user actually walks.

01 · You arrive

A calm home

One greeting, one invitation. Nothing to beat, nothing to keep up with.

Problem
Most wellness apps open with a streak, a score or a demand. That framing turns a hard day into a failure before you've written a word.
Interaction
Sprout opens with a single greeting and one invitation to reflect — with optional prompts for the days when knowing what to write is the hard part.
A calm home
Today's reflection

02 · Sprout notices

Patterns handed back, not scored

Themes surfaced from your own reflections — connection, courage, initiative — in your words rather than a number.

Problem
A mood score flattens a week into a digit and gives you nothing to recognise yourself in.
Interaction
Sprout reads across entries for recurring themes, then writes periodic letters back to you about what changed.
Letters from Sprout

03 · You look back

The distance, made visible

A gentle look back at the seasons you've moved through, and the habits that carried you.

Problem
The moment you most need proof that you're changing is the moment change is hardest to see.
Interaction
The journey view lays your entries out across seasons; progress is retold as chapters rather than percentages.
Your journey

09Final prototype

Try Sprout for yourself.

This prototype represents the culmination of two rounds of research-informed iteration.

Sprout home screen with the mascot and a reflection promptVideo coming soon
Now that the problem, the journey and the solution are on the table — a short narrated walkthrough of the final experience. The player loads only when you press play, so it costs nothing until you want it.

What changed · Design principles

Four rules I could be held to.

Each one is written as a refusal, because most of the work was deciding what Sprout would not do.

Sprout mascot holding a glowing heart, nestled in green leaves

Principle 01

Don't measure growth. Reveal it.

Growth is personal. The product's job is to help someone see it, not score it.

In product · Seasons and stories replaced charts and streaks.

Principle 02

Don't judge. Notice.

No advice, no labels, no diagnosis. A companion that quietly pays attention.

In product · Sprout surfaces patterns without prescribing what to feel.

Principle 03

Don't motivate. Encourage.

Celebrate small movement instead of applying pressure to perform.

In product · Personalised letters instead of nudges and badges.

Principle 04

Don't show numbers. Show stories.

A story is easier to relate to and far easier to remember than a figure.

In product · Then-to-Now, Reflection Forest, Letters from Sprout.

13Reflection

What I’d carry into the next healthcare project.

Assumptions, research, iteration and storytelling — the three lessons that outlasted the sprint.

Learning

Fall in love with the problem, not your first solution.

Every round of research challenged an assumption. Questioning the idea rather than defending it is what uncovered a more meaningful problem.

Learning

The first problem statement is rarely the real one.

I began by asking how to measure growth. I finished by designing a way to notice growth that was already happening.

Learning

Good products reveal meaning instead of adding data.

Most of the design work here was subtraction: chat, scores, streaks, prompts, the therapist layer.

What changed in me as a designer

I came into this sprint trying to defend an idea. I left it more interested in the question underneath it. Two pivots taught me to treat my own framing as the first thing to test — and that the most useful thing I can bring to a healthcare team is a willingness to remove what I've already built when the evidence asks me to.

A person smiling while looking at Sprout on their phone, with a small potted plant companion nearby

One year later

“I really have changed.”

A user opens Sprout after a year and reads what she wrote when things were hard. For the first time, the distance is visible.

Growth doesn't always feel like it's happening. Sometimes you only notice it when you look back.

That's why Sprout exists — not to tell people who they should become, but to remind them of who they're already becoming.

So — how do you know you're becoming a better person? You look back, and you can finally see it.

What's next

Keep exploring — or say hello.

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