Co-creating an app with a retired therapist: Our biggest lesson on minimalist UI

Hey everyone,

​I’m currently building an emotional integration and somatic grounding utility called Inner Presence. The concept is a bit different from traditional wellness tools—it's structured as a progressive multi-week experience rather than just random, isolated exercises.

​To make sure the product actually helps regulate the nervous system, I’ve been co-creating the logic directly alongside a retired therapist.

​Translating complex clinical nervous-system regulation into a mobile interface has been our biggest hurdle. Here is the single biggest lesson we've learned so far:

​In mental health tech, a feature-rich UI is often a user's enemy.

​When someone is dealing with severe anxiety or emotional overload, their brain is already overstimulated. Throwing badges, streaks, profile setups, and heavy gamification at them just causes more "performance anxiety".

​Because of this insight, we made some unconventional product choices:

​No Account / Zero Login: You open the app and you are instantly in a safe space—no database walls.

​Obsidian-Dark Interface: The layout uses an ultra-dark theme specifically to drop sensory stimulation.

​No Streaks: There are no pushy notification pings forcing you to keep a daily streak alive.

​We are gearing up for our public launch soon! For the fellow builders and designers here:

​How do you handle the tension between wanting to build deep, feature-rich products and keeping your UX/UI completely clean and invisible? Would love to hear your thoughts or similar design lessons!