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At some point, in some stressful situation, someone’s told you to take a deep breath…and with good reason. Controlled breathing helps your body respond to stress by managing your “fight or flight” response, which can improve performance from the boardroom to the classroom to the golf course and beyond. The team at Neuropeak Pro realized the need for a solution that would help users track and learn to control their breathing in high stress situations, and began the journey of developing training programs in this space over 10 years ago.
Since its inception, Neuropeak Pro has been focused on using data to help users improve their stress response. Initially focused on pro athletes like Jordan Spieth, Bryson DeChambeau and Kirk Cousins they’ve since been working on ways to enhance their technology and bring it to a wider audience.
One of the main challenges that Neuropeak Pro faced was the cost of their solution. Dependent on specialized hardware and software tools, their technology set would cost users upwards of $2,500, which greatly narrowed their reach.
To break free of third-party tech and control costs, they needed to develop a custom solution that would still allow them to accurately report on respiration and heart rate variability metrics in real time, and then seamlessly aggregate those scores to report on overall user performance.
While preparing for a more varied and self-guided user base, they also had to ensure that the complexity of their product remained intact even though the interface would need to be greatly simplified. As a result, they knew they’d have to redevelop their whole product – from the wearable to how easy the app was to use.
The wearable itself would have to measure the user’s heart rate, as well as use a built-in accelerometer and gyroscope to measure the expansion and contraction of the abdomen as they inhale and exhale, and then feed all of that information back to the app in real-time. To make sure that both the app and the wearable integrated properly, electrical engineering expertise would also be required in addition to the app development itself. Cross team communication was imperative to a successful, timely launch between the engineering team and third-party hardware developers; an effort led by our team at VAULT.
Neuropeak Pro enlisted us to address their needs because they understood the importance of flexibility, leadership, and the ability to adapt to a quickly changing tech environment.Given the multifaceted nature of this project, we worked with the team at Neuropeak Pro to drill down into their overall business model, their plans for growth, and how they envisioned bringing users onto their integrated platform. Once we were aligned, we were then able to hop right into the trenches with their team and easily respond to (and sometimes even recommend) changes in direction as needed.
Built on top of the open-source Movesense platform, we found ourselves working between multiple technologies and interfacing with a number of third-party consultants.As a result of our highly collaborative partnership with Neuropeak Pro, they were able to realize their goals of developing a highly useful device and app that could help athletes, business people, and everyday users improve their stress response and make it work toward their benefit.
The VAULT design team worked closely with the design team at Neuropeak Pro to build an experience that was clean, intuitive and engaging within the style guidelines developed by the Neuropeak Pro team.
Neuropeak Pro’s solution needed to be overhauled to help scale the product to a larger audience. While their services would need to be provided at a lower-cost, the app still needed to have:
Requiring both software and electrical engineering knowledge, we worked with the team at Neuropeak Pro, as well as a number of other consultants engaged by Neuropeak Pro, to ensure the new product provided the same great tools pro athletes have come to depend on to the masses.
Just newly launched, we’re actively working with the team at Neuropeak Pro to collect feedback and guide further optimizations. Currently, the main focus of the app is to introduce the concept of these breathing exercises and programs to users and provide deeper insight into each user’s progress, incentivizing the purchase of the wearable and other premium features of the app.
With a roadmap for new content modules, Neuropeak Pro will become a platform that athletes and users of all kinds can turn to for specific exercises based on their sport or setting. Whether it’s breathing exercises for the golf course, the football field, the classroom, or the office, this new, streamlined version of their tool will continue to help users of all kinds.
They’re flexible and have outstanding communication and collaboration skills.
