Tidal

01Background

Tidal is a sleep and meditation app for city office workers. The previous version was packed with features, and at night people had to hunt through a dozen entry points, which only woke them up more. The team wanted the redesign to feel like “open it and drift off.”

02My role

I worked as an external designer alongside the product manager and two front-end developers, covering the information architecture, the design of every core screen, the illustrations and the motion guidelines.

03Process

1. 1

   Cutting the entry points down to one screen

   The usage data showed that nine in ten users only touched three kinds of content. The home screen now holds a single “Tonight” card, and everything else folds into a secondary row at the bottom.

2. 2

   Designing for the dark

   Every screen starts from a gradient running from deep blue to lavender. Text contrast is set just high enough to read, so the screen does not glare at night, and settings include an even dimmer bedtime mode.

3. 3

   Agreeing motion with engineering

   The waves and the breathing ring were exported as Lottie files, with a table of durations and easing curves so developers could match them first time rather than going back and forth.

04Result

The new version shipped in June 2025. The average time from opening the app to starting playback fell from 52 seconds to 14, and seven-day retention rose by 11 percentage points.