UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM + CONTEXT

Individuals seeking community support in their sobriety journey often face friction when engaging with Stone Dry due to fragmented communication across multiple third-party platforms. This disjointed system makes it difficult for both members and organizers to stay connected, track participation, and effectively plan events.

The Stone Dry Company is a non-profit dedicated to supporting individuals on their sobriety journey through community. It aims to spread the idea that sobriety is fulfilling and empowering, offering connection and encouragement to those that are just starting their recovery journey.

Currently, it relies on multiple third-party apps for communication and events, complicating attendance tracking, budgeting, and outreach.

As part of the Develop for Good Winter 2025 cohort, I collaborated with a team to design a comprehensive solution tailored to Stone Dry's needs.

PROJECT CONSTRAINTS AND CLIENT REQUIREMENTS

Before beginning the design process, it was important to acknowledge several key constraints set by the client and the nature of the project. These factors directly shaped the direction of the final solution.

Platform Constraint

Brand Consistency

User Demographics

The client specifically requested the development of a mobile app to reduce reliance on third-party platforms.

While the client had an existing website and brand assets, there was no app-specific style guide. Our designs needed to extend the organization's visual identity across a new platform, ensuring both brand recognition and usability.

The organization serves a wide age range (20-60+). This demanded accessibility-conscious design choices such as clear typography, intuitive iconography, and simple interaction flows to accommodate users of varying tech familiarity.

THE SOLUTION

The Stone Dry Company Mobile App

We designed a mobile app that allow users to easily find meetings, register for events, track milestones, access resources, and connect with support networks.

WHAT I DID:

Developed low, mid, and high fidelity wireframes for the Resources interface
Ideated questions for user research and conducted interviews
Collaborated on development of user personas

KEY FEATURES

Seek sobriety support for yourself or a loved one by taking an onboarding quiz to tailor the app to your experience.

Easily register for events & meetings and view them by group & upcoming date

Access valuable resources for sobriety

Track your sobriety milestones

RESEARCH PART 1: UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE

We first began our process by aiming to understand our audience. We asked ourselves, "who are we designing for?"

We researched our client's marketing documents and performed a deep dive into our non-profit client's website. This primary research was needed because Stone Dry's Community serves a number of people from diverse age ranges who participate in different support groups.

From there we could pinpoint that our audience was made up of:

Individuals seeking sobriety support for themselves

Individuals seeking support for someone else (friend or loved one)

Individuals seeking to maintain their sobriety

Individuals seeking community and faith-based support

With this preliminary research done, our team was ready to progress forward and dive into the personal experiences of users.

RESEARCH PART 2: UNDERSTANDING THE USER

To design an effective app for Stone Dry, we conducted user research through 31 surveys and 2 interviews and synthesized our findings into an Affinity Map to understand the needs and challenges of individuals in their sobriety journey.

Through these interviews, we got to understand the experiences and needs of Stone Dry members ranging from 23 to 62 years old.

"As a person seeking sobriety support for myself, I want to be able to easily find meetings, register for events, track my milestones, and access resources through Stone Dry."

"As a person seeking sobriety support for someone else, I want to be able to share relevant meetings and events with my friend/loved one and access valuable resources to help support them along their journey through Stone Dry."

Affinity Map

With these synthesized findings, we identified three key features to develop.

Finding and registering for events and meetings

Allowing users to track their recovery milestones

Accessing resources directly within the app

EVENTS

MILESTONE TRACKER

RESOURCES

A secondary feature that the client wanted to see and if we had time to implement was the faith based/motivational-based quotes section that rotates a collection of quotes for the user per day.

Since faith is a crucial part to the Stone Dry community and sobriety support, as reported by users during our user surveys and interviews, we felt that adding this into the mobile app was important.

IMPLEMENTATION

We developed a user flow chart and journey chart as we prepared for wireframing, branding, and prototyping.

By mapping out the user and task flows, we ensured key actions like finding meetings, registering for events, tracking milestones, accessing recovery resources, and connecting with the community were intuitive and efficient.

Our user journey map highlighted emotional highs and lows, helping us design solutions that provide encouragement and reduce friction at critical moments.

DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS

Challenge 1: Should Users Leave the App?

During initial wireframing, I explored layouts that enabled users to make calls or access resources directly within the app. However, after client feedback, we repositioned the Stone Dry Resources page as a support hub. I then added a warning banner to clarify when users should seek emergency services if facing a crisis.

First Iteration

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Second Iteration

Challenge 2: Resources without Links

Another challenge arose when some resources lacked external websites, leading to empty states within the interface. To address this, I designed the final iteration to be more flexible, allowing buttons to expand dynamically when external links weren't available, ensuring a balanced and intuitive layout.

Resource with no external link

Resource with external link

Challenge 3: Establishing Visual Hierarchy

While the first iteration of the individual-resource interfaces prioritized presenting information, it lacked cohesive design that aligned with the app's branding. This led to the second iteration's inclusion of images to enhance visual consistency.

Feedback from my team prompted me to reconsider the layout, leading to a third iteration where resource images were given more prominence and ultimately improving the interface's hierarchy.

First Iteration

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Second Iteration

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Third Iteration

TESTIMONIES FROM OUR CLIENT

We're beyond grateful for the Develop for Good team. They made the whole process fun, easy, and honestly, way better than we could have hoped. With basically no tech/development background on my part, they taught me many things as well! Can't wait to see the impact this app has, thanks to their hard work!

Working with Develop for Good to build the Stone Dry app was an awesome experience. Our team is so talented, super patient, and just overall great to work with. From day one, they really listened to our vision and brought it to life in ways we didn't even think of. The communication was solid the whole way through, and their attention to detail made a huge difference.

REFLECTIONS

My time with DFG and The Stone Dry Team was truly a rewarding and invaluable experience crucial to my growth as a product designer. I learned so much from my talented team and gained the skills necessary towards working through design challenges and communicating effectively with clients. Working with the Stone Dry Company was also a pleasant experience as our client's attentiveness and flexibility in meeting our requests helped propel us into creating a successful product. I can't wait to see how this app supports Stone Dry's community once it launches!

WHAT I LEARNT

Raising concerns is important