When Procter & Gamble's ZzzQuil brand needed to expand beyond the medicine cabinet and into consumers' nightly routines, they required a comprehensive digital ecosystem that could deliver value before, during, and after product use. The challenge wasn't simply designing an app or updating a website, it was creating an integrated experience that positioned ZzzQuil as a holistic sleep wellness partner rather than just a sleep aid product.
ZzzQuil approached our studio to reimagine their digital presence through both a native mobile application and a redesigned e-commerce website. With an established brand identity built for packaging and retail environments, the project demanded careful translation of brand equity into digital interfaces optimized for late-night usage. The outcome needed to support multiple user journeys: from product discovery and purchase on the website to nightly engagement through app features designed to facilitate better sleep.
The project presented several interconnected challenges that required strategic design thinking rather than purely aesthetic solutions.
Brand Translation Without Dilution
ZzzQuil had built considerable brand recognition through its distinctive purple color palette and product packaging. However, translating this equity to digital screens particularly for an app designed for pre-sleep usage, required fundamental adaptations. The existing brand colors, while owning shelf presence, weren't optimized for extended screen viewing in low-light conditions. The challenge was adapting the visual system to function in "dark mode" environments without losing brand recognition.
Cross-Platform Consistency
Users would interact with ZzzQuil across multiple touchpoints: browsing products on the website, making purchases, downloading the app, and engaging with sleep content nightly. Each platform had different technical constraints and user expectations, yet the experience needed to feel cohesive. Creating design systems that maintained brand integrity while respecting platform conventions required careful systematic thinking.
Coast-to-Coast Collaboration
The project team spanned both coasts, with stakeholders and collaborators distributed across multiple time zones from West to East Coast. Coordinating design reviews, iteration cycles, and approval processes across a three hour time difference demanded structured communication protocols and asynchronous collaboration methods to maintain momentum without creating bottlenecks.
Feature-Rich App Architecture
Beyond basic product information, the app needed to deliver genuine utility through multiple content types: guided meditations, ambient soundscapes with custom mixing capabilities, narrated sleep stories, personalized sleep insights, bedtime routine management, and intelligent alarm systems. Each feature required its own UX patterns while contributing to a unified experience. The architecture needed to accommodate this complexity without overwhelming users seeking simple pre-sleep rituals.
Rather than approaching this as separate app and website projects, we developed an integrated strategy that treated both platforms as complementary components of a single user journey.
Brand System Evolution for Digital
We began by analyzing how the existing ZzzQuil brand needed to evolve for digital environments. The signature purple palette was rebalanced for screen viewing, with careful attention to contrast ratios, eye strain considerations, and readability in low-light conditions. This wasn't simply "making things darker", it required rethinking the entire color system to function in dark mode while maintaining the brand's visual equity. We established new guidelines for how brand elements would behave across different screen contexts and lighting conditions.
User Journey Mapping Across Touchpoints
We mapped comprehensive user flows from initial product discovery through purchase and into ongoing app engagement. This revealed critical handoff points where users transitioned between platforms such as post-purchase app download prompts or product replenishment notifications from app to website. These transition moments became design priorities, ensuring users experienced continuity rather than disconnection between touchpoints.
Content-First Interface Design
For the app, we recognized that the content itself calming soundscapes, soothing stories, gentle meditations needed to drive the interface design rather than being contained by it. We developed a content-forward architecture where navigation receded when users engaged with sleep content, allowing the experience itself to take center stage. Interface elements appeared only when needed, then gracefully disappeared to avoid distraction during pre-sleep rituals.
Modular Design System Development
To maintain consistency across platforms while accommodating their unique requirements, we built a comprehensive design system with modular components. Buttons, cards, navigation patterns, typography scales, and interactive elements were designed to flex across contexts while maintaining visual consistency. This systematic approach ensured that design decisions made for one platform would translate logically to the other.
Asynchronous Collaboration Protocols
With the team distributed across time zones, we implemented structured design sharing and feedback cycles. Detailed design documentation accompanied every deliverable, allowing stakeholders to review work independently and provide consolidated feedback. We established regular synchronous touchpoints for strategic discussions while enabling day to day progress through asynchronous communication. This approach respected everyone's schedules while maintaining project velocity.
The delivered solutions addressed each challenge through purposeful design decisions grounded in user needs and business objectives.
Adaptive Brand Expression
The digital brand evolution maintained ZzzQuil's distinctive identity while optimizing for screen viewing. The purple palette was rebalanced with adjusted saturation levels and carefully calibrated contrast ratios that reduced eye strain without diminishing brand recognition. Gradient treatments that referenced the product's liquid form were adapted for digital, creating atmospheric backgrounds that felt calming rather than energizing. Typography was optimized for readability at various sizes, from small body copy to large hero statements. The result was a brand that felt unmistakably ZzzQuil while functioning beautifully in late-night usage contexts.
Comprehensive App Feature Set
The mobile application delivered a complete ecosystem of sleep-supporting features, each with its own carefully considered user experience:
E-Commerce Website Redesign
The website served dual purposes: educating potential customers about ZzzQuil products while facilitating purchase. We reorganized content architecture to support both research and transaction modes. Product pages featured comprehensive information about ingredients, usage, and benefits, presented with clear hierarchy and digestible formatting. Educational content about sleep health was integrated throughout, positioning ZzzQuil as a knowledge resource rather than just a product seller. The checkout experience was streamlined to minimize friction, with smart form design reducing required inputs. Photography direction ensured product imagery felt premium and approachable, avoiding clinical aesthetics in favor of aspirational comfort.
Cross-Platform Design System
The underlying design system ensured that whether users encountered ZzzQuil on mobile, tablet, or desktop web, they experienced consistent brand expression and interaction patterns. Components were designed to be responsive and adaptive, maintaining their essential character while flexing to different screen sizes. Documentation provided clear implementation guidance, enabling the development team to build with confidence. This systematic approach reduced design debt and created a foundation for future feature additions.
Dark Mode as Design Philosophy, Not Aesthetic
The project reinforced that designing for dark mode environments requires fundamentally rethinking contrast relationships, not simply inverting colors. Successful dark interfaces balance reducing eye strain with maintaining sufficient contrast for readability and usability. The ZzzQuil brand translation succeeded because we treated dark mode as a design philosophy creating calm, low-stimulation environments rather than as a visual aesthetic to be applied superficially.
Content Quality Drives Interface Simplicity
When the content itself provides value whether calming soundscapes or sleep insights the interface should recede rather than compete. The app's most successful features were those where we had the discipline to remove unnecessary elements, trusting that quality content would engage users without interface embellishment. This restraint created experiences that felt effortless, which directly supported the app's sleep facilitation purpose.
Cross-Platform Consistency Requires Systematic Thinking
Maintaining cohesive experiences across multiple platforms isn't achieved through pixel perfect replication, but through systematic design principles that can express themselves appropriately in different contexts. The design system we built for ZzzQuil succeeded because it prioritized principle over prescription, giving clear guidelines while allowing flexibility for platform-specific optimization.
Distributed Teams Benefit from Over Communication
Working across time zones revealed that detailed documentation and clear communication protocols aren't overhead they're essential infrastructure. Every design decision documented, every rationale articulated, and every dependency mapped created shared understanding that kept the project moving forward even when team members weren't simultaneously available. What initially felt like extra work proved to be time saved in avoided miscommunication and rework.
