CASE STUDY PUBLISHED 2020

Moodbeam

App for the world's first wearable emotion tracker

PROJECT SUMMARY

Sauce designed and built the companion mobile app for Moodbeam — a Hull-based startup behind the world's first self-reporting wearable mental health tracker, as featured by the BBC. The app connects wirelessly to the Moodbeam wristband, transforming raw button-press data into personalised mood patterns and trends. The platform is now widely used for both personal wellbeing and workplace mental health monitoring.

CLIENT

Moodbeam

SECTOR

Mental Health / Wearables

LOCATION

Hull, England

STATUS

Live

THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE

A world-first wearable — with no app to bring it to life

Moodbeam is a Hull-based company with a genuinely pioneering product: the world's first self-reporting wearable mental health tracker. At its core, the device is elegantly simple — a wristband with two buttons that let users log how they feel in real time.

But without a sophisticated mobile platform to store, interpret and present that data, the wristband was just hardware. Moodbeam needed a companion app capable of turning a stream of button presses into meaningful, actionable insight for users.

The specific requirements Sauce needed to address included:

A wireless connection between the wristband's USB chip and a mobile device
Intuitive data visualisation turning mood logs into understandable patterns and trends
A fully customisable interface accessible on any paired device
A design simple enough for everyday use, but rich enough to provide genuine wellbeing insight
Coordination with Moodbeam's Chinese-based hardware manufacturers to ensure hardware-software alignment

HOW IT WORKS

From a single button tap to a complete picture of your emotional day

The Moodbeam system is built on a principle of frictionless self-reporting — the lower the barrier to logging a mood, the more consistent and accurate the data. Sauce designed the app around this philosophy.

Tap and log

The wearer taps the yellow button (positive) or blue button (low) on the Moodbeam wristband at any point during their day — a single physical gesture that takes less than a second.

Wireless Sync

The wristband stores data in a built-in USB chip, which connects wirelessly to the Moodbeam app on any paired mobile device — syncing logs automatically without any manual input from the user.

Visualise & Understand

The app transforms raw mood logs into clear visual patterns and trends — showing users how they felt across the day, across the week, and what may be influencing their emotional state over time.

THE PROCESS

We began with an intensive brainstorming session, fully exploring Moodbeam’s own ideas, vision and objectives.

During the iterative process, it became clear that what was initially envisaged wouldn’t match up to how people would use the product in reality. We had to adapt to the results of UX testing.

THE SOLUTION

An intuitive app built around how people actually feel — and how they actually behave

The Moodbeam app Sauce delivered is a fully customisable mobile platform that connects wirelessly to the wristband and presents mood data as intuitive visual patterns and trends throughout the day.

The interface is designed for everyday, habitual use — clean enough not to add cognitive load during difficult moments, but rich enough to surface genuine insight over time. Users can access their complete mood history from any paired device.

UX INSIGHT

During development, Sauce discovered that the app originally planned wouldn't match how people would interact with it under real emotional conditions. The iterative UX testing process — adapting to how people actually behave rather than how they might be expected to — was central to delivering a product that genuinely works.

THE RESULTS

A world-first product — and a platform that has grown beyond personal wellbeing

Since launch, The Moodbeam wristband has established itself not just as a personal wellness tool, but as a recognised solution for workplace mental health monitoring — an application that grew organically from the platform's simplicity and the low-friction approach to mood self-reporting.

World's first of its kind

Moodbeam holds the distinction of being the world's first self-reporting wearable mental health tracker — a genuinely pioneering product in the growing wearable wellness market.

Featured on BBC News

Moodbeam attracted significant media attention including coverage by the BBC, cementing its profile as an innovative British technology product in the mental health space.

Adopted for workplace wellbeing

Moodbeam has become widely established as an agile solution for monitoring workplace mental health — giving organisations a low-friction, anonymous way to track employee wellbeing in real time.

Access from any paired device

The app's cross-device design means users can view their complete mood history and trends from any device paired to their account — keeping wellbeing insights always accessible.

THE CLIENTS VERDICT

"Sauce jumped on board and helped steer some very interactive and lively meetings to help draw out the essence of what we were trying to achieve."

- Christina Colmer McHugh, Co-founder and Director, Moodbeam

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