115: Headspace's Raleigh Tomlinson on Product Design Principles that Drove 65,000,000 Downloads

Raleigh Tomlinson is a Senior Product Designer at Headspace, specializing in creating transformative on-ramp experiences that introduce users to cultivating mindfulness in their daily lives. With a dedication to crafting seamless and engaging experiences, Raleigh has become a driving force on Headspace's growth team, contributing to the company's success as one of the world’s top mental health apps.

In this episode, Raleigh & Delaney cover:

• How leveraging empathy drove 65,000,000 downloads for Headspace
• Best practices for designing best-in-class wellness technology experiences
• Design strategies for user retention & virality
• Optimizing pay-walls, trials & subscription models for impact & revenue
• How Headspace uses data to design world-class products
• How Headspace thinks about user testing & user research
• Thriving in a corporate environment: the importance of relationship building & emotional intelligence
• Secrets to creating real, lasting behavior transformation in users with technology
• The art of building joyful products

Raleigh's journey in the design world began with her innate curiosity and love for understanding people. She obtained a degree in Biology with a focus on neuroscience but transitioned into design through a UX bootcamp and freelance projects. Raleigh has now designed products in AI, energy, consumer technology and mental healthcare. Her diverse experience across industries and background in research has enabled her to bring a unique perspective to her work at Headspace.

Raleigh is a speaker, having given talks at Harvard graduate school as well as numerous conferences. Headspace has won tons of awards for top tier product design, including 4 Webby's and a nomination for Apple Design awards. Outside of her work at Headspace, Raleigh enjoys canoeing around her neighborhood on the canals, making music, and exploring Los Angeles.

Connect with Raleigh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raleigh-tomlinson/

More from Raleigh:

"Back when I first started out, I was all about making sure new startups were finding product-market fit. It's super important to be able to say what your product does in a nutshell and see if it's valuable through simple tests. You can have an amazing idea, but you need to validate the idea is of interest to others. I helped companies learn and grow by testing and iterating quickly.

Fast forward to my time with Headspace's growth team, and I've learned a ton through funnel experiments, especially how to create monetization structures that work for both users and the company. It's really cool to see how even small changes can make a big difference in revenue for a more established company.

Some of the projects I've done include:

-Revamping the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) business model: got a 25% increase in paid subs

-Redesigning the D2C registration flow: 15% increase in paid subs

-Making the D2C onboarding process more trustworthy: 15% increase in free trial starts

-Creating a new student plan: updated the international process and added 7 new countries

-Launching a referral program: sent out 45.1k referrals in the first month, with a 19.1% conversion rate for people getting referred

-Winning first place in an internal hackathon

When it comes to user experience, it's all about making people's lives better. When you're making an app, you've got to understand what you're doing for your users. The value you bring to them should match what they're giving back to you. Focusing too much on just making money can make you forget that people actually pay for a great experience. Users having a transformative experience through your product is what leads to a successful business outcomes. They aren't buying screens, they're buying a better version of themselves.