RD* studio

Case 03 — Auge · guided therapy app

The content existed. The therapy didn't.

Auge saw a therapy app inside Escola da Inteligência's library of socio-emotional video lessons. The design job: the structure that turns watching into guided practice.

Role
UX · UI · design lead
Scale
End to end — research, product, design system, brand
Methods
Competitive benchmarking · OOUX · content modeling
Status
Designed with a three-phase roadmap, v1.0 → v3.0
01 — The situation

A library of lessons, waiting for a structure

While providing services for Escola da Inteligência, I kept coming back to one asset: a large collection of pre-recorded video lessons on socio-emotional education. Playful and character-driven for younger children; more realistic and relatable for adolescents. Auge's CEO saw an opportunity in that shelf — a guided therapy app, built by repurposing content that already existed.

The brief sounded simple and wasn't. Video lessons are passive; guided therapy is not. For the word guided to mean anything, the app needed a way to open a session, work through it, practice, and close — with the videos serving that structure instead of standing in for it. The challenge, as framed: design and implement an app facilitating guided therapy, accessible and engaging.

I carried it as UX, UI and lead — from the first competitive teardown to the logo on the icon.

A video can teach. It can't check that you practiced. The whole design problem lived in that gap.
6stages per session
3rollout phases
1brand & logo, created
02 — The turn

Model the session, not the video

Two decisions shaped everything that followed.

Objects before screens. The product would be structured before anything was drawn — screens came last.

A session is not a video with chrome around it. I modeled the session itself as six stages, with video as one component inside an active structure — users move at their own pace and stay guided.

ONE SESSION, SIX STAGES Signaling & opening Core content intro · expansion · context Techniques Reinforcement Celebration Closing pulled from the dynamic technique library INSIDE EACH TECHNIQUE Instruction Practical steps Validation Feedback Celebration system validates completion before the session moves on
Session content model, redrawn — six stages per session; each technique from the dynamic library runs its own validation loop.
03 — The work

From teardown to runway

  1. Learn the field before drawing a line

    An in-depth analysis of competitor therapy apps: I tested them, documented every feature with screenshots, and distilled the lot into an object-oriented UX map of key elements and interactions. Not a mood board — a structured inventory of what the category already does, and where it stops guiding.

  2. Flows, sitemap and the object map

    User flows and a sitemap structured the journey; the object-mapping exercise pinned down key actions, priority levels, page hierarchies and the user-engagement pathways designed to keep users coming back.

    continuation prompts Session Technique library Therapy series & content clusters Goals & progress Journal & self-assessment Reminders & engagement hooks Dashboard NPS & content feedback Peer evaluations
    Object map, redrawn from the OOUX exercise — Session at the center, engagement pathways around it.

  3. A design system, and a front door

    Color schemes, button styles, typography — a design system to keep the product visually consistent as it grew. Alongside it, a structured onboarding funnel, because a therapy app earns or loses its user in the first minutes.

  4. The feature spine

    Login and account setup. Goal setting and progress tracking. Session reminders and engagement hooks. Daily journaling and self-assessment tools. NPS surveys and content feedback. Structured therapy series and content clusters. Peer evaluations. A personalized dashboard with continuation prompts and tailored recommendations. Subscription and monetization. Each one an object from the map — not a wishlist item.

  5. A brand, and a runway to grow on

    I created the brand identity and logo for the app, then scoped a three-phase roadmap: v1.0 with core therapy functionalities, content adaptation and back-office training; v2.0 adding learning pathways and expanded engagement; v3.0 reaching for group-therapy video conferencing, guided professional interventions and an interactive therapy hub.

    v1.0 launch Core therapy functionalities Content adaptation Back-office training v2.0 deepen Learning pathways Expanded engagement v3.0 expand Group-therapy video calls Guided professional interventions Interactive therapy hub
    Three-phase rollout roadmap as scoped — v1.0 core therapy, v2.0 learning pathways, v3.0 group therapy.
Session list screen from the Auge app design: a feeling-themed series ('Sentimento X') with its sequence of named sessions and progress markers.
One full session screen from the Auge app design, top to bottom: content title, expansion text, embedded video lesson, technique block and journaling inputs, ending in a continue action — the six-stage content model on a single screen.
Straight from the Figma file: a series with its sessions, and one full session — the content model rendered as a single screen (scroll the right one).
04 — Where it landed

A shelf of videos, redesigned as a therapeutic product

The full design lives in Figma: flows, sitemap, design system, brand, the six-stage content model and the dynamic technique library — plus a rollout plan that scoped a v1.0 the back office could be trained on and a v3.0 worth growing into. Existing socio-emotional content, restructured into guided practice — new lessons slot into the six-stage model without a redesign.

Full project in Figma ↗

What this says about how I work

  • The full stack of design in one engagement: competitive research, OOUX, flows, design system, UI, brand and logo.
  • Effort goes where it compounds — the heavy design lift went into the content model and the dynamic technique library, not into individual screens.
  • The roadmap was itself a deliverable — three versions scoped and sequenced so the business could commit to v1.0 knowing where v3.0 lands.