I’m stressed. I just spent an hour sitting on the Los Angeles freeway trying to make my flight, which I made—just barely—by being the jerk who jumps the security line. Sitting on the plane is no better. There’s a baby shrieking, and I mean shrieking, in the row in front of me. I’m on deadline, my Wi-Fi is spotty, and damn it, I haven’t even eaten breakfast.
Now would be the time when a more centered person might take a few deep breaths and meditate. Instead, I pull out my phone. Usually this is where I mindlessly scroll through Instagram and Twitter as a way to distract myself, but not today.
I open a new app called Pause and touch my finger to the screen. An amorphous blob of ocean blue digital ink begins to jiggle around the app’s interface, accumulating more mass as I slowly drag my finger across the screen like a magnet.
Pause ($1.99 on iOS) is designed to help you relax, and it does, much in the way watching floating clouds or staring at a particularly entrancing screensaver might. The app was created by Ustwo’s studio in Malmo, Sweden, and Peng Cheng, a UX designer and founder of PauseAble as a way to battle stress and depression.
Ustwo
