Designing Sobero, a Behavioral Health vertical from 0-1
Sobero is a mindful drinking app born from a behavioral insight: people quitting smoking often start questioning their relationship with alcohol too. As Product Design Lead at Kwit, I helpted to shape this new vertical from zero — leading research, product strategy, and a team of 3 direct reports across 8 months to ship a science-based, market-ready product.
My role
Managed a product design team of 3.
Co-designed Sobero brand identity and storytelling.
User research, strategy, product IA, UI design.
Impact
📲 11.7% download-to-trial conversion in month one (vs. 7.5% top 25% benchmark, RevenueCat).
🚀 Science-based MVP launched in 8 months under significant resource and timeline pressure.
🌱 Led and expanded Kwit into a new behavioral health vertical.
Company
Sobero
Year(s)
2022-23
Role
Lead Product Designer
Kwit's core product helps people quit smoking. As the user base matured, we identified an opportunity to expand into adjacent behavioral health verticals.
Opportunity space
We mapped 3 potential candidates — sugar, alcohol, and screens — aligned with Kwit's mission of helping people build healthier lives. To evaluate them, we ran qualitative research with existing users on their first 6 months, focusing on how their lives shifted after starting to reduce or quit smoking.
The signal that came back was consistent: alcohol kept surfacing as both an emotional trigger and the next frontier users wanted to address. Paired with a broader cultural shift — the sober-curious movement — alcohol became the clear first bet.
As a small start-up with an existing product to maintain, our most significant constraint were resources but also time.
Trade-offs
A priority shift mid-process reduced our working time from 12 to 8 months, with a hard January launch deadline tied to a business seasonal peak existing for habit formation products. This forced sharp prioritization decisions. The most meaningful trade-off was community vs. gamification.
Even if both were planned features, but we could only build one properly. Research made the call clear: modifying behaviors around alcohol, unlike smoking, is rooted on a needed support or community layer. Gamification was deferred.
We also deliberately minimized feature scope while protecting the core behavioral model.
When shaping Sobero's identity, we kept returning to a single question: How do you make choosing a healthier behavior feel like a meaningful act rather than a restriction?
Bonus: Brand storytelling
The answer came from an unexpected place — astronauts. Astronauts go alcohol-free in space not because they have to, but because the mission demands it. They make a deliberate, values-driven choice in service of something bigger than a moment of comfort.
That reframe — from restriction to intention — became Sobero's north star. Our users weren't giving something up, they're choosing clarity and intention. The space metaphor connected their everyday acts to something expansive and aspirational.
