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Iain McConchie, VP of Design at Headspace Inc.
How do you take a centuries-old practice, port it to the digital space and continue to improve upon it every day? For the team at Headspace, the question goes beyond meditation as a standalone focus, to a broader mission of improving health and happiness around the world.
Iain McConchie has been with Headspace as VP of Design for nearly a year, but his history with the company goes back far further. Initially founded as a meditation event business, Headspace has evolved into a meditation and wellness app. Today, it offers Facebook events, meditation for sleep, group meditations and more. Iain joins us to talk about Headspace’s progression, partnerships with organizations such as the NBA and the power of community practice. Listen in.
Carl: Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Bureau Briefing. Now today we're going to start The Bureau Briefing like we always do, with some deep breaths. In through the nose, and out through the mouth. And if you use the app Headspace, you know that's the way almost every meditation begins. Well, I'm excited to have with us on the show today the VP of design for Headspace, Mr. Iain McConchie. Iain, welcome to the show.
Iain: Hey Carl. How's it going?
Carl: It's going great. And I already told you this when we were talking before, but I'm a little bit of a fanboy, I really am, of Headspace. It's made a huge difference for me just in, I journal, I run, I meditate now. Meditate was kind of that third part that I added and it's been amazing. Now, I would love for you to share with everybody a little bit about your background and what it was that kind of got you up to being the VP of design at Headspace.
Iain: Okay. I mean, it's been a long journey, Carl. I mean, the early inception of my career was after graduating from a degree in graphic design, I went to MTV who you may have also heard of, and-
Carl: I heard of them, yeah.
Iain: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Very lucky job, but it was very much the lowest rung of the ladder as a junior designer working on their website. But it was a good proving ground for working in house. It was a very interesting and dynamic company to work for. And I think that was this kind of idea of living with a brand, for a long time, was really interesting to me. But, there's only so long you can kind of live with the same material before it does, it becomes a little tiresome and repetitive as well.
They have these temple events every year and you can have, again, different artists, different things happening, but it's the same, you're going through the same set of motions. So, moving on from there, it was inevitable to kind of go into something more dynamic and more agency led. And it kind of fused, jumping ahead a little bit, I kind of moved into more of a technology led role working for a company called The App Business where I was until the last year, making mobile software. So, up around the time that the iPhone became very present in people's lives, we could see an opportunity to sort of really use technology to sort of enhance people's lives.
And I think, even as an agency, we felt that. The founders from that agency worked with Apple marketing the product when it came out. I don't know if you remember the ads for the original iPhone when you saw a hand pop up and said, "This is mail," and it showed you how to do mail on an iPhone. That was our founders, they helped work on those ads across Europe.
Carl: Really?
Iain: Yeah. So, they were-
Carl: That's fascinating.
Iain: Yeah, it was a really good insight for them because they were coordinating with Jobs and the team there to say, "Hey, this app is great. We want to feature in an ad, but it needs to do these things because that's what Steve wants." So they would have to have this back and forth with the different companies to say, "Hey, you might want to tweak this, you might want to do that, otherwise it's not going to be on the ad." So they kind of had the foresight to sort of say, "Well, we're having these conversations with big clients and they really want to be featured in the ads. Maybe there's a business in that."
And the name, The App Business, as straightforward as it is, was quite effective in sort of garnering a client list. And we worked with a whole bunch of different companies over the years, and in 2012, one of those clients was Headspace. So Rich and Andy, having just been off the back of a successful release of a product, were looking to kind of optimize it and take it farther forward. They didn't have the team that they have now. They were based in London still, and they really needed some support. They had a team that could run, but they wanted to run faster.
So we were brought in to help with that, and I helped, worked alongside their team to really kind of sharpen the focus on what the product should be. It was doing a lot of things. It was primarily focused on delivering meditation content, but it was trying to encourage you to do lots of ancillary things that didn't have the depth that the meditation product had. So we recommended that it focus on meditation for now, and really make that work. And when you've made that work, then you can start to kind of broaden the content offering there.
But that was really interesting, to think that that's, yeah, seven years ago now that that conversation was had. And fast forward seven years to now, and I took on the role of VP of design in February of this year. So, it's interesting, some have said it's coming full circle, now having worked with them, helped launch them with V.2 of the product, which they, obviously they took in house, it was a small engagement we had with them.
To take that in house and then to see that kind of develop over the year, I think working in an agency, you'd always see the product or the piece of the product, you'd kind of put a lot of energy and soul into it for someone else, only for it to kind of stagnate on a website or stagnat in the App Store. But this was one product that I was really happy to see grow over the years and kind of really flourish. So, when the opportunity came around to sort of get involved, but get involved in a much more fundamental and a leadership level, I couldn't really turn down the opportunity.
Carl: I can imagine that you couldn't, especially given that the app was so well received. At least that's my perception based on how much I use it, and the other people throughout the Bureau community I've spoken with, we have a health and wellness channel and a lot of people talk about Headspace. So, one of the things that was fascinating to me was, as somebody who's been in digital and marketing and all of these things, as I'm using it, I started to realize, "Okay, the app is doing less and less as I get further and further into meditation," right? It's letting me take on more and more of the responsibility.
And I was like, "So, for the monthly fee, what's going ... Oh, look at this, now there's something to help me sleep at night." Right? So then, so I started to see these things. Two things, I'm going to backup for just a second. When you first come in, this is not a visual design. This is truly an experiential design. It's audio design, it's all of these things. So, was that different for you when you came in? And I'm assuming that as VP of design, you're responsible for the entire experience.
Iain: Yeah, it's definitely, I guess since we saw the flattening back in iOS 7 and around about that time, where a lot of products had a kind of richness about their appearance and you came in and they had this kind of appeal that was very aesthetic-led to this kind of reduction in depth and feel. Headspace was never 3D, necessarily. It never had that kind of depth of feel, but it always had a kind of tangibleness to it. It moved, the characters that were in there that Anna and her team sort of created are such a good tool for explaining the almost unexplainable.
And just kind of the feel of it as well is really interesting. It's a big button that you come and press before you start. The kind of thinking back then was like, "How do we just make it so straightforward and clear what you need to do?" Because actually, once you get started, you're going to close your eyes for the most part. So we don't need all this superfluous and silly details around.
Carl: Exactly.
Iain: They're useful, but in that moment, you've got your eyes closed. So, or at least, yeah, in most cases you do. So, and that was very much what steered the product in the way it is now. So now, when we start to look at products like sleep, it's an interesting thing because it's adjacent to meditation and I think it's also worth saying that as much as we have focused on meditation, we're a mindfulness company and our mission is to improve the health and happiness of the world. And as much as we know there is so much value in meditation and sitting with yourself, counting the breaths, taking that moment, it is not the only tool that will allow you to be mindful.
Having sleep, that idea of rest and restoration, the way that you move, the fact that you eat well, all these things are so fundamental to living a healthy and happier lifestyle that it was a natural step for us to move into sleep. And our member base has really responded very well to that as well. They see it, they acknowledge it, they use it and short of relaunching an entirely new product, it didn't need to be, it just fit in very naturally to our current offering.
Carl: Well, and it made perfect sense to me. Or, let me say that again. Actually, it worked extremely well for me because there were times where I wanted to meditate but I had already meditated and honestly, because of the whole how many days in a row and this and that, and I'm not going to get credit for two in one day. As silly as it sounds, the video game player in me, I was like, "Well, this isn't going to work." But the whole walking through the pet shop or whatever it might've been, right, is like, when I'm laying there and my wife is watching TV, but I've got a sleep mask on and I need something in my ears, meditating again didn't really make sense. I didn't need that again. I just needed something to distract me enough.
So that was amazing. And then, also there's now this sense of community that's come in. And let me just say this, it did get to a point where there were so many different types of meditations, and they're probably all still there, but recently you've simplified the way that they show themselves. And I didn't think about this until just now, because now when I log in, it's more of a, "Continue from where you were," versus a, "This is your catalog of everything that you've done." So, I don't know if that's a recent change or if I'm using the app differently, but just the two things I notice now when I log in are continuing and also that there's a community doing this and that was never there before.
Iain: What we call our kind of group meditations, that's a fairly recent addition to the product. And it's definitely something that we have been trying to understand how we can bring community into the product. At Headspace, in our headquarters, we have daily meditations every day as a team. So at 10:00 AM, we all gather around in our kind of common area and we'll all sit down together and meditate. And sometimes, that's just through the product, just played through the speakers. Sometimes, if we're very lucky, that'll be Andy, when he's in, guiding us through a meditation.
And we know how valuable that kind of sense of doing things together and joining that as a community, that can be really powerful and very motivating as well. So we are looking for those kind of, it's, we talk about it in terms of inspire, guide and support. So that kind of supporting piece, someone else is meditating with you, is quite reassuring and also very powerful for someone to kind of maintain their practice.
Carl: So, is it Andy's voice?
Iain: In the sessions?
Carl: In the app?
Iain: In the app, yeah.
Carl: I did not know that.
Iain: So we have the group meditations and they are very much like the everyday Headspace. So that would be our kind of today's meditation or today's Headspace as we call it. And that is a catalog of, continually, every day you get this new meditation and it's a little bit of set up and kind of some stuff to consider while you, well, obviously you don't consider, before you meditate because obviously you're not thinking when you meditate. You might be noting while you meditate.
But it's just a a bit of context for your day and sort of makes you, yeah, a bit more considerate in one thing or the other. We reflect that in the group meditation setting, so it will be either something of a similar theme or a relatable theme and you're able to then do that knowing that there's other people doing that with you, and it runs on the hour, but it's the same meditation throughout the whole 24 hour period. Yeah.
Carl: So have you seen that a lot of people are moving to the group meditation? I haven't done it yet. I didn't really understand what it would be, so I've just never pushed that button. But are you seeing a lot of people that are just like, "Yeah, I'm going to do this with a bunch of people?"
Iain: Yeah, there's some promising numbers of people that come in. Because it's every hour, I think we're seeing a good spread of people coming in. I think if we were to maybe schedule it and make it more of a kind of point of view, I mean, very recently we did an event, in fact it was last weekend, we did an event in Pittsburgh where we held some live meditations. Now, if those had been an appointment of view in the product, I suspect we would have seen a huge spike in the people using it to sort of come in and meditate with Andy.
Right now, we host a lot of those special events on our Facebook page because we actually have a really, very vocal community on our Facebook groups page. And we're looking at the likes of those types of events, the idea that you can can kind of meditate with others, as a means of kind of capturing our community. Not to capture them literally, but just to sort of bring in the idea of community into the product. Because we know how strengthening it can be to a practice. So yeah, there might be some more in that space coming soon, but we're just trying to understand what's the best way to do it.
Carl: So, talk about that for a second. How are the ideas for changing or evolving the app itself, how do those come into play?
Iain: It's a combination of many things. So, you have to kind of look at what we've been doing over the last 10 years with the product and with Headspace. Originally a meditation events company, then moved into app as a means of distributing Andy farther than we could if we had him going to lots of different events, and then for the last seven or eight years, we've really dug deep on providing content and applicable courses and packs that help you either in the moment as a kind of like, "Help, I need something just to kind of help me take a minute," or, "I want to work on an aspect of my life."
So, it's been content-led, less experience-led, although that has been a factor. And now, as we try to bring in more strands of the community and more experiential moments and brand moments, that's where we're starting to say, "Okay, what is it that we can do as Headspace that will offer more value to our customers and our members and actually answer some of the outcomes?" So why is it people are coming to us?
We have a very vocal, like I said, Facebook page. We get a lot of members who will come directly to us and thank us for the help that we've provided for them, which, when you have a mission as we do and then you hear directly from those customers, it's very motivating to try and go, "Okay, that is amazing that we were able to help that individual with their life and their progress in life. Who else could we help and how do we understand that?"
So we have a research team who go out and be speak to our customers and they speak to potential customers as well, understanding what health and happiness means for them. We have a very strong data analytics team who can look at what we're doing, what is actually happening in the product right now. And the marriage of that qual and quant allows us to kind of understand where we could, what are the opportunities and what are the things that maybe we're not doing that we could do, what are the things that we're maybe failing our customers on.
Some of those are subtle and maybe have small kind of marginal gains in terms of keeping people in the practice. Others are transformational, and I think the community aspects that we're looking at could be some of those transformational things. But definitely, I think I mentioned earlier, we wanted to inspire, guide and support. So we're always looking for what is it going to inspire someone to come into our product, what is going to inspire someone once they're in the product and what will inspire them for the rest of today. So we really, we always want to try and hit those beats and we always want to be where people are as well. And when you start to look at it across all those kind of different opportunity areas, there's so much we could do.
Carl: Oh, man.
Iain: And actually, the real problem is actually deciding what, of all of those things we could do, which are we actually going to do?
Carl: Right. I mean, that makes perfect sense because, especially, I had not even, embarrassingly, had not even thought about the analytics of looking to see how many times somebody watches the cloud video to talk about how thoughts are really like clouds and you can choose to watch them go by or this and that. I mean, that's really insightful. If you see people watching that a lot of times and maybe you don't know why they're watching it, but you know that this is a point. This is something of emphasis, that's really important.
One change that I noticed recently was now I have this option of a woman's voice to guide me through meditations. And I tried it, but I was just so in love with Andy's voice, I didn't even know it was him, that I went back, but what was that decision like? Because especially if it's the founder and their voice. Now obviously, looking at diversity, equity, inclusion, looking at trying to create a more widespread offering where people can choose who it is that's guiding them through stuff, I totally understand that, but that had to be a momentous change.
Iain: It definitely is a significant change. I mean, I think, I guess, the thing to remember is a couple of things, actually. Andy is beloved. We get so much mail, we get so much praise for him and his work and his voice. There are people, though, that don't enjoy his voice. They don't like how he sands. And then, we know from wanting to appeal to as many people as possible, that a female voice or let's say, rather than describe it in terms of male and female, because I think we need to make sure we're thinking of including everyone there, a different voice.
But we also want to make sure that we're holding onto our authentic expertise. Andy, he was a Buddhist monk, he was there for over a decade.
Carl: Wow, I did not know any of this.
Iain: So, if you don't know the backstory, I would recommend that you go and listen to the NPR podcast on how we started this. A very recent episode, Andy and Rich, the other co-founder, they talk a lot about how Headspace came to be and the kind of journey that we've gone on. And they are so much better at telling the story than I can because they lived it. It's their story. But yeah, and then, but what was great about when we brought in Eve, who is the female voice, she's worked with Andy for a long time. She's trained and knows, she wasn't a Buddhist monk for 10 years, but she is as good as an expert in meditation and mindfulness practice as Andy.
So we're confident when we bring people or other voices into the product that they are experts because we need the validity of the practice to stand up. And it's also the reason that we have science tested pretty much every single course and pack within the product.
Carl: Wow.
Iain: We work with AMA over here in the states, the American Medical Association, and we work with the NHS in the UK and we have other partners around the globe that we work with to sort of test the validity of if I listen to this pack over a course of 30 days, am I actually going to be less stressed? Thankfully, science says, "Yes." It's not just anecdotal, it's not just, again, marrying that qual with quant data is so powerful. Someone can say, "Yeah, I loved it. I feel much better." But actually, we can look at scans of the brain and see-
Carl: Wow.
Iain: Really, that it's had that impact and it really gives us a kind of, I think it's safe to say that now, in this market, there's so many competitors out there, but I'd love to sort of see all their white papers and I'd love to see them talk in the same way that we can. We can talk very confidently about how great our product is, not just-
Carl: 10 years as a monk and medical proof. It's like, I think you're doing pretty great.
Iain: Yeah. And it's great, as we kind expand out into, Headspace Health is another venture, which, maybe that's a talk for another day, but you can look it up and how that will be very impactful in a wide range of people's lives. And it's a very different take to what we do now, but the things that we're learning now, specifically within medicine and health, are really valuable to us in terms of a more kind of traditional consumer product. And again, the kind of things that we really want to do and go after as a plan to. What we are trying to do right now is focus. Luckily, we work for a company that helps with that. So, it makes it a little easier.
Carl: Well, and it's amazing to hear that you're meditating at work every day. I would totally hope that you are. I would hope that that was ingrained in the culture and it's great to hear that. It is. One thing that I also noticed recently was the NBA endorsement. And to me, when I saw that, I went, "Wow." I mean, and not that it lifted you to a new level, but it puts you in a world I wasn't expecting.
Now, I appreciate, especially having been a Bulls fan way back in the Jordan era with Phil Jackson where he was the zen coach, it was like, "Okay, I can see where some of this crosses over." But I also thought, "Wow, I have no idea what the financial implications are, but that feels like it can really help you take the app to another level." So I'm just curious if you have any insights, how did that relationship come to be and the NBA as being the first versus some of the other sports? I'm just curious.
Iain: So, when we linked up, I mean, we do have a number of partnerships that we have. I think maybe some are more apparent than others. I think, if I recall, NBA is probably the first one that's made itself very visible within the product. But we do have a partnership with Nike. So, if you ever use the Nike Running Club app for example, you can go into there and you can find what we called gated runs. So they have their coach Bennett in conversation with our coach Andy, and they will gauge you through a run. You can be listening to your favorite tracks and they will talk over, it'll dip the sound back, and you can run alongside your favorite motivational tracks while also mindfully thinking about how you're progressing and you're not closing your eyes. You're running with your eyes open.
Carl: I hope not, right?
Iain: But you're able to sort of take notes of your surroundings, take note of how often your feet are hitting the ground, the kind of your breath. And those just help. From an athletic point of view, you train physically hard, you eat the right things, you sleep well. So why wouldn't you train your mind as well? And I think when we look at the NBA within the product, it's called performance mindset. That's the the pack. And it's how do you as an athlete, not push yourself further, but actually enable yourself to be the best you can be. And taking a moment for yourself to reflect, making sure you're kind of, essentially, in the zone before and after you go out on the field, is essential.
So we're improving the health and happiness of the world. Meditation, again, so to repeat the point, is one tool within the kind of mindfulness toolbox. And a partnership with the NBA or Nike or whoever else it is, is really about us kind of broadening our audience and our reach as much as it is to declare that, "Hey, as much as we are about meditation, the kind of application of mindfulness kind of goes beyond just sitting in a seat and for 10, 15 minutes."
So I think for us, it's who are the right partners, who can we kind of align our values with? And I think it's fair to say that, as encouraging as the feedback was, we had a few people who were quite shocked, actually, from seeing a logo, another logo, not Headspace, but in the product-
Carl: I could see that.
Iain: Yeah. But, we were very confident in the fact to say, "Hey look, we understand everyone loves the brand that we have and we are very close to it as well. So it wasn't a decision that was made lightly. Again, there's no monetary transactions happening with these partnerships. These are to enable each other to have a kind of broader appeal, to-
Carl: Really?
Iain: Align with values. Yeah, it wasn't a sponsored by or paid for.
Carl: That's amazing.
Iain: We're helping their athletes and they're helping us from an awareness point of view. So, it's mutually beneficial.
Carl: That's so crazy to hear, and actually makes me feel really great because the first time I saw the NBA logo I thought during my meditation I was going to hear sneaker squeaks. I was like, I didn't know what the change was going to be. I seriously, because it was on the happiness track, and I was like, "Okay, well happiness is a three pointer," but I couldn't figure it out. So to understand that it's truly just a connection of communities-
Iain: Yeah, absolutely.
Carl: Feels perfectly with what Headspace would do. So, I do have one last question for you, and that's just how are you? Is this just the ultimate job? I mean, it just feels like if this is something that you're in the mindset of, I just can't imagine a better place to be.
Iain: It is. It's really interesting to think back of when I originally worked with the team back in 2012 and think, "Wow, what a really interesting company that was to have interacted with for that small period of time. I wonder what it's like to work there." And to now be here and to think, "Wow, actually, this is a pretty good place to work." Again, we have our group meditations, we are advocating the lifestyle outwardly. So if we're not acting it, we're kind of, there's something wrong there.
Carl: That's right.
Iain: So, to be able to have that time to meditate, it's fantastic. To be able to have that time to have a mindful break where it's like, "Hey, you know what? Life is busy. We have meetings. We still are a business. We're not sat on cushions, just contemplating life. We're actually, we are intentionally looking after how to provide value for our customers. And that requires a lot of hard work. But the benefit that we have here, is that we get to kind of do it in a very mindful and very intentional way." So it definitely is, yeah. I mean, I've only been here since February, so talk to me in another six months. Maybe-
Carl: I'll ask you to another six months. Absolutely. Well and also, the question was hard to say, "No, this sucks," right? There's no way you're going to do that.
Iain: No, it definitely does not suck.
Carl: No. Well, and I just wanted to say thank you. I know you've only been there for a little while, but you joined a team that I think has helped so many people, and especially now that I understand their mission better, it's like, I think they're well on their way. So, thank you for that, and for helping to evolve the app so that it continues engaging us in different ways, and also for being on the show today. I just really appreciate you.
Iain: No, thank you, Carl. Wonderful to talk to you.
Carl: All right. Everybody listening, give meditation a shot. If you don't use Headspace, give it a shot, download it, and we will talk to you next week. All the best.
Image via Headspace
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