You open your phone. And then what? This is the question that drove everything.
They require navigation, choices, and focus. These are exactly the resources that disappear during an acute anxiety episode.
I spoke to people in Berlin who knew what helped them. Every single one said the same thing: they could not reach it when they needed it.
people worldwide living with anxiety disorders
WHO, 2023
found existing apps unhelpful during an acute episode
Primary research, 2026
wanted a solution requiring zero decisions in a crisis
Primary research, 2026
3 interviews. 10 surveys. These are their words.
"I froze."Interview participant · Primary research, 2026
"Like no exit."Interview participant · Primary research, 2026
"It felt very temporary. The anxiety came back fast."Interview participant · Primary research, 2026
"Like someone staying with me until I feel better."Interview participant · Primary research, 2026 · describing what they wished they had
Anxie is built on a single principle: configure your support while calm, so a single tap is all it takes when you are not.
Choose triggers, stimuli, tone, and silent mode. Done once, in advance, at your own pace.
The home screen is a single large button. Everything activates immediately. Zero navigation.
Post-crisis check-in, optional mood tracking, emergency contact if things escalate.
If users do not complete setup, no crisis support is ever available. This is the product's foundation.
Failing this is failing the user at their worst moment. A technical SLA tied to the product promise.
An incomplete flow signals the intervention is not working or the user is too distressed to continue.
Users who return after a crisis trusted the product to help again. That is the real measure of value.
For a mental health product, NPS 35 is not a satisfaction score. It is a measure of emotional trust.
Simplicity in the interface requires the most complexity in the spec. Designing a one-tap experience meant anticipating every condition, edge case, and failure state before a single line of code.
Safety constraints are a product advantage. Embedding a Mental Health Consultant veto into the Definition of Done and the Go/No-Go checklist built something that could genuinely be trusted.
Primary research gives a product its spine. Every prioritisation call came back to what people said in Berlin. Data does not just inform a product. It makes it defensible.
Complexity belongs in setup, not in the crisis path. Any feature that introduces friction at the wrong moment is out of scope regardless of its merits. This one principle resolved every debate.