#163 - Creating Mindful Product Experiences with Jay Vidyarthi of Still Ape
Mar 26, 2025
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Jay Vidyarthi, a designer and the founder of Still Ape, dives into the fusion of mindfulness and technology. He shares his journey from UX struggles to creating products that enhance well-being. The conversation highlights how design should shift from merely user-based to life-centered. Jay emphasizes mindful presence and the emotional aspects of technology use, offering practical strategies to reclaim our attention in a digital world. He also discusses the importance of user research in uncovering assumptions and fostering genuine connections through design.
Jay Vidyarthi emphasizes the necessity of designing mindful products that prioritize mental health and foster inner peace.
The podcast highlights the distinction between user experience and life experience, advocating for a holistic perspective in design.
Compassion is presented as a deeper design motivation than empathy, encouraging designers to actively alleviate users' pain points.
Deep dives
Designing for Mindfulness and Well-Being
The significance of aligning design work with personal values is emphasized. The speaker reflects on their journey in UX design and how a realization of the need for mental health and well-being shifted their focus towards creating mindful product experiences. This shift involved examining how technology, often perceived as a neutral tool, impacts mental health and acknowledging the necessity for design that prioritizes inner peace. By leveraging skills in user research and information architecture, designers can contribute positively to mental health by foregrounding well-being in their projects.
Understanding Mindfulness in UX Design
An exploration of mindfulness in user experience design highlights the importance of presence, awareness, and clarity. Mindfulness, as framed by the discussion, encourages UX practitioners to connect deeply with users’ experiences beyond transactional interactions. This approach involves asking critical questions about users’ holistic experiences, considering their past, present, and future interactions with technology. By cultivating a mindful design process, stakeholders can create a safe space that allows for open challenge and reflection, leading to more authentic and impactful user experiences.
Life Experience vs. User Experience
The distinction between user experience and life experience is introduced, emphasizing a need to broaden perspectives beyond just the user's immediate interaction with a product. The speaker argues that traditional user research often fails to account for individuals' holistic life contexts, which limits the understanding of how products affect them. By considering a wider framework that encompasses both the individual and their environment, designers can enhance their ability to provide meaningful solutions. Such an approach not only addresses specific user needs but also acknowledges the broader impact of design on different life aspects.
Cultivating Compassion in Design
The discussion elevates the notion of compassion as a more profound approach than empathy in the design process. While empathy allows designers to understand users’ feelings, compassion motivates them to relieve users' pain points actively. By reframing how designers view their relationships with users and the impact of their work, they can focus on creating solutions that enhance overall well-being. This perspective encourages designers to recognize that their work influences not only the immediate user experience but also broader social and ethical considerations.
Reclaiming Mindfulness in Technology Interaction
A practical discussion on managing technology interactions highlights the importance of setting boundaries without guilt or shame. Users are encouraged to reflect on their experiences with technology and identify deeper emotional needs each engagement satisfies. This self-awareness can lead to a balanced approach that allows individuals to enjoy technology without it becoming a source of stress. By fostering this mindful relationship with tech, individuals can reclaim their autonomy over attention in an increasingly demanding digital landscape.
In this episode, Erin and Ben chat with Jay Vidyarthi, designer, author, and founder at Still Ape. Jay is a leading thinker around designing mindful product experiences. He's also published a new book, RECLAIM YOUR MIND, which examines the balance of technology use and mindfulness in our everyday lives.
Jay shares his journey to working in the mindful technology space, how we can shift our frame from "user" to "life" experience design, and the benefits companies see when their products consider the whole person on the "other end." Jay also shares strategies for maintaining mindfulness during our own technology use, and ways we can carry these practices into research and design practices.
Highlights
03:55 Design for Mindful Well-Being
08:13 Mindful Design: Impact Over Intentions
14:54 Broadening Design's Impact on Life
25:20 Holistic Recruitment Strategies
34:10 Enhancing Connection Through Mindful Presence
42:48 Understanding Technology's Emotional Pull
About Jay Jay Vidyarthi is the author of RECLAIM YOUR MIND and an accomplished designer, entrepreneur, and thought leader at the unique intersection of mindfulness and technology. As the founder of Still Ape, he’s been involved in over fifty technologies that have helped millions of people improve their well-being, including Muse, the Healthy Minds Program, Sonic Cradle, and many more. His work and ideas have been featured by Harvard, MIT, TED, Forbes, CNN, Fast Company, and Vice.