Horizon App Screens
Mental illness makes everything harder. Ailments like depression, anxiety, ADD/ADHD, panic disorders, etc. make significant life events like job interviews or dates tough, and can seep into the everyday mundane activities as well. They eventually wear down your willingness to do these routine activities, your energy to do them right, and your enthusiasm to keep up with recurring tasks. This often becomes a vicious cycle wherein without realizing it you end up neglecting these tasks, and yourself in the process.
Having lived through periods of my life where I was battling the symptoms of common mental illnesses I remember feeling trapped in a sense of de-motivation and a lack of organization or encouragement. However recently I have been taking stock of my current life situation and after realizing that I have the drive and resources to make the app that would’ve helped me years ago, I decided to design Horizon.
Horizon is a scheduling and task manager app in its most essential description, and simply put, its job is to help its user get things done. However it was designed with a very specific user in mind. Horizon is scheduling made for anyone experiencing any type of mental illness or ailment.
It’s very baseline and simplistic features make it so that anyone can add activities and to-do items and go about checking them off while getting a scope for their short-term timeline. This is extremely vital because when battling depression, anxiety, etc. you often get bogged down in the long term while forgetting to take care of your short term deadlines and tasks.
Everything about Horizon is made to help you overcome that. The colors are soft and gentle with splashes of bright spots to keep you calm and cheerful. The font I used is incredibly legible and rounded to further reinforce that softness. There is very little all caps because I didn’t want anyone to feel like they were being yelled at. The edges of most components are curved and pleasant. The ideal transitions of the app are soft and resemble the gentleness of water. If you tap the icon at the top, on any page, the app gives you a new message of encouragement that is updated daily. And if that’s not enough, and you’re having a particularly rough day getting your stuff done, hit the Take a Break button. Take a Break will bring you to a soothing guided meditation where you will be talked back to a state of objective reality away from any of your dark thoughts. Use this when there’s nobody else around to talk you down, and you still have a list of things in that Activities tab. Everything in this app is designed to promote positivity- even the R in the logo is lifting the I up towards the light. (Logo to be posted soon!)
Horizon is for anyone that needs it. Keep doing your thing, one foot in front of the other, all with the horizon in mind.