Overview

Most meditation apps are libraries: thousands of pre-recorded sessions written for everyone and therefore for no one in particular. Vela takes the opposite approach. Users tell the app about their goals, the people who matter to them and the life they’re building, and Vela generates visualizations, pep talks and affirmations written and voiced specifically for them.

I owned the product end to end. I created the brand, designed 50+ screens and the design system, made the motion language, and built the mobile app in Flutter, using Claude Code as an engineering partner to move from design to shipped features quickly.

The Problem

Visualization is one of the most effective mindset techniques, but it is hard to do on your own and generic audio rarely lands. A script about “your dream home” means little when it doesn’t describe your home, your family or your goals.

The product idea was simple: make every session personal. Making it work was harder. We had to resolve four tensions:

1. Personal vs. effortless. Good personalization needs deep context, such as goals, relationships and limiting beliefs. Asking for all of that up front can feel like filling in a tax form.
2. AI speed vs. calm. Generating a script and voicing it takes time. Waiting screens usually create anxiety, which is the opposite of the product’s purpose.
3. Generative vs. consistent. Every session is unique, but the experience must still feel like one trustworthy brand.
4. Subscription vs. trust. A wellness product asking for payment has to earn it before the paywall, not after.

Who It’s For

• People interested in mindset, manifestation and personal growth who struggle to visualize on their own.
• People facing a specific stressful moment, such as an interview, a hard conversation or an anxious spiral, who need help right now.
• People who had tried meditation before and never connected with generic content. App Store reviews show many users describing exactly this.

Key Experiences

1. Onboarding: building a “Living Profile”

Onboarding is the most important part of the product: everything Vela generates depends on it. It collects the user’s life vision, goals, the people who matter and the limiting beliefs they want to let go of. This becomes a Living Profile that feeds every future session.

Key decisions:

• Voice or text. Users can talk to Vela instead of typing, which makes sharing personal things feel more natural and much faster.
• One question at a time, so each step feels like a conversation rather than a form.
• Progress is saved. If life interrupts, users can skip and finish later from their profile.

2. Generating a session

The user picks a session type, adds what’s on their mind, and Vela writes and voices a session for them.

The waiting state was a core design problem. I designed it as part of the ritual rather than a loading spinner. On the engineering side, the screen stays awake during generation, and a failed attempt can be retried without losing the user’s choices.

3. The player

The player is designed to disappear so the user can close their eyes. Music starts within seconds of tapping, while the voiced session continues to load. The player supports lock screen, Control Center and AirPods controls, plus skipping forward and back within a session. Playlists let users browse visualizations, pick one, and generate a new version of a scene.

4. Pep talks for hard moments

Vela 2.0 added pep talks: two-minute sessions created on the spot for a difficult moment, combining visualization with breathwork and movement. When a user feels low, the pep talk reminds them of their own past wins before lifting them up.

5. My Day hub

A daily home that keeps users coming back without pressure. It includes calendar sync, mood tracking, guided morning and evening journal prompts, and three personalized affirmation cards each morning. Journal entries and logged wins feed back into future sessions, so the app gets more personal the more it’s used.

Morning sessions open with a warm greeting and coherent breathing, then walk the user into their actual day, drawing on their calendar and goals.

6. Habits without guilt

Retention mechanics are designed to support users, not shame them:

• Reminders arrive at the user’s wake and sleep times and stay quiet once they’ve already practiced that day.
• The streak counts only days the user actually listened, and users can manually mark a day, so the streak reflects real practice even when life gets in the way.

Flutter app

I built the mobile app in Flutter from a single codebase for iOS and Android.

The app is integrated with a Django backend that runs the generation pipeline:

1. The user’s Living Profile, journal and session input are combined into a request.
2. Grok writes a personalized script. The goal is a scene that sounds like the user’s real life, using their people, goals and words.
3. ElevenLabs voices it in one of five premium voices.
4. The audio is layered with music and breathwork cues and returned to the player.

I used Claude Code as an engineering partner throughout development. This let one designer-developer ship at the pace of a small team.

How the Product Evolved

Vela didn’t stop at launch. Based on user feedback and usage, the product grew from personalized meditations into a broader mindset companion:

• v1.0: AI-generated meditations, subscriptions, and fixes to payments, password reset and playback.
• v2.0: voice onboarding, two-minute pep talks, journal entries feeding sessions, new voices and audio.
• v2.1.2: explorable playlists, better personalization, full system playback controls, smart reminders, a warmer visual refresh, support for larger text sizes, and morning sessions built around the user’s day.

The Outcome

• 50+ screens designed
• 2,000+ personalized meditations generated
• 1,000+ registered accounts
• 4.8★ App Store rating
• Numerous written and video testimonials

Users describe sessions that feel like their own life: their family, their places, their goals. Several reviewers say they had never connected with meditation before Vela.