We built a privacy-first mobile recovery platform around a structured 100-day programme, helping users stay engaged through daily check-ins, progress tracking, guided mindfulness, and peer support. The platform achieved a 64% programme completion rate and 79% daily engagement, while secure authentication and privacy-first architecture supported a scalable recovery experience.
Addiction Recovery Mobile App helps people work through compulsive behaviour and rebuild habits over a structured 100-day programme.
The design problem was harder than the engineering one: recovery apps have to hold users accountable without shaming them.
Such an app must also handle setbacks - which are normal and expected - without making a user feel they have failed and should stop.
We built daily check-ins, progress visualisation, guided mindfulness tools, a real-time peer support forum, and privacy-first authentication.
"What was the hardest design decision we had to make together on this build?"
The hardest decision we made together was dismantling the 'streak' counter. We originally built it like a fitness app, if you miss a day, you drop to zero. But in beta testing, when someone had a setback on day 42 and saw a big red zero, they didn't try again; they felt immense shame and deleted the app. Your team helped us redesign the dashboard into a 'trajectory chart' that showed 41 out of 42 successful days as a massive win, not a failure. That single, empathetic UX shift is the reason our program completion rate is so high.
Building software for people in recovery required a different approach to conventional consumer engagement design. The product needed to create accountability without shame, support users through setbacks, provide non-linear learning, protect highly sensitive personal information, and create a safe peer community.
Traditional consumer apps optimize for time spent in the app, while a recovery platform should ultimately help users build a life beyond it. The 100-day programme needed enough structure to create momentum without becoming punitive. Streaks were especially sensitive: a setback could not erase previous progress or make a vulnerable user feel like they had failed completely.
Recovery is not linear. Users arrive with different patterns, experiences, and starting points, and progress can change from day to day. The platform needed to support structured 100-day progress while allowing users to recover from missed days and setbacks without forcing everyone through the same rigid sequence.
Privacy was a core product requirement, not an optional feature. Users could be recording information they had never shared with partners, employers, or doctors. Authentication, notifications, app visibility, and data handling therefore needed to minimize the risk of sensitive recovery information being exposed unintentionally.
Community could provide meaningful accountability and support, but an unmoderated recovery forum could also cause harm. The platform needed community features designed around safety and moderation by construction, ensuring peer interaction remained supportive while protecting users in vulnerable moments.
We engineered a privacy-first addiction recovery app using React Native, structured around an empathy-driven 100-day programme with habit tracking, progress visualization, mindfulness exercises, peer support, secure authentication, and behavioural analytics.
Structured logging of milestones, cravings and habits with visual progress charts, built on Realm and Redux for reliable offline-capable local state. Logging a craving without acting on it is itself a meaningful event in behaviour change, and the tracker treats it as one.
Dashboards showing achievement and streaks. The design brief that mattered most: represent setbacks as data points in a longer trajectory rather than as failures that reset the user to zero.
Meditation and attention exercises integrated into the daily flow, giving users something to do at the moment of a craving rather than only something to record afterwards.
A Socket.io-backed forum for shared discussion and accountability partnerships. Peer connection is one of the most evidence-supported elements of recovery programmes, and it is the part of the product no software feature can substitute for.
Apple ID, Google and biometric login. Biometric unlocking matters specifically here: it means someone else picking up the phone cannot open the app, and the user is not typing a password associated with a service they would rather not explain.
Aggregate engagement and completion tracking used to refine the programme - which content holds attention, where in the 100 days users disengage, which features precede drop-off.
The platform achieved a 64% programme completion rate and 79% daily engagement among users participating in the 100-day programme. The peer community became a recurring source of accountability, while privacy-first authentication helped the application remain discreet on users' devices.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Daily accountability | Scoring and punitive streaks | Check-ins framed as logging, not scoring |
| Setbacks | Progress reset to zero | Progress shown as a long-term trajectory |
| Learning | Non-linear | Users move through content at their own pace |
| Peer support | Real-time, structured | Socket.io community with accountability pairing |
| Privacy | Assumed, not optional | Biometric login, no identity-revealing surface |
We can help you design privacy-first digital health experiences that support users with empathy, accountability, secure technology, and thoughtful behavioural UX.
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