The existing app, one of the most well-known meditation apps in German-speaking markets, was built on an outdated native tech stack. The design system was a messy Figma library. The UX was dated and fragmented. When I joined as Head of Design, the design team was three people — one product designer, one graphic designer/illustrator, and one brand designer.
6 months after joining, the company decided to explore launching a new app focused on sleep — 7Sleep. What started as a product initiative became the catalyst for something much larger: a brand repositioning, a new multi-brand design system, an automated design-to-code pipeline, and a complete rethinking of how design and engineering worked together.
Over 12 months, I led the design team through this transformation — from strategic workshops with management to shipping 7Sleep on the app store. The design infrastructure we built became the foundation for the company's future products, and the original 7Mind app was subsequently rebuilt using the same system after I left.
Here are 5 stories about how that happened.
I inherited two team members whose roles were unclear and whose processes had significant gaps — particularly around stakeholder management and feedback cycles, which often led to excessive revision rounds and unclear ownership. Early on, I focused on redefining each person's scope and establishing clearer ways of working.
I also hired and developed a Product Designer up to the point where he would independently own product verticals. With roles clarified and processes tightened, a team of four later covered an ambitious scope: a brand refresh, a new design system, a new app from scratch, and the groundwork for rebuilding the original one.
Under my leadership and creative direction, each team member delivered at a level that exceeded what the team size would suggest. Our brand designer delivered multiple brand direction routes and helped us land on stronger colour tokens across both brands. Our illustrator didn't just create artwork — he built a systematic illustration style with guidelines that allowed the visual language to scale without him. Our product designer and I split the product design work across four verticals — acquisition, activation, engagement, retention — covering the full breadth of both apps.
The team's output was the result of deliberate role clarity, tight creative direction, and a culture where everyone understood both their lane and the bigger picture.
The decision to launch 7Sleep didn't land on my desk fully formed. I was part of the workshop where the idea was first explored, and I supported the direction — but the strategic design work that followed was mine to lead.
The core question was: how do you venture further from the mother brand without alienating it, while building something that could scale into a multi-app ecosystem? Management was already considering future apps and sub-brands, so whatever we built couldn't be a one-off — it needed to be a reusable framework.
November 2022, 7Mind offices, Berlin
Over 1.5 months, I led a series of 3 workshops with the management team to explore the possibilities. Between workshops, we went back to the drawing board, first expanding and later polishing a single route. I helped both design and management navigate the options — from umbrella branding to fully independent brands — assessing trade-offs at each step. This work shaped the brand architecture that all subsequent design decisions were built on.
I also pushed for a brand refresh as part of this process. It was a soft one — not a full rebrand — but it was necessary to modernise the visual identity before extending it to new products. I crafted and presented multiple routes, helped management evaluate them, and then coordinated the execution with our brand designer inside the design team.
The outcome was a clear brand positioning framework that gave 7Sleep its own identity while maintaining a family relationship with 7Mind — and a model flexible enough to accommodate future products.
Initially, we had a messy and incomplete Figma library, no code parity, no documentation, and no shared language between design and engineering. For a company about to launch a new app and eventually rebuild its flagship, this wasn't going to work.