01 · Problem
Relapse doesn't make an appointment.
Recovery support is real and it works — therapy, sponsors, group meetings. But it's scheduled, and cravings aren't. A craving typically peaks and passes within 15–20 minutes, and the most dangerous ones arrive when every scheduled form of help is closed. Here's the night the whole product is designed around:
A hard day ends badly
Work stress, an argument, exhaustion. Mood is low — but on paper, tonight looks like every other night. Nobody's watching the pattern forming.
Risk builds quietly
Sleep won't come. An old contact texts. The check-in reminder gets swiped away. Every signal exists — scattered across apps, visible to no one.
The craving peaks
The therapist is asleep. The Tuesday group is five days away. The sponsor's phone might ring through. The options collapse to willpower — and shame makes even dialing feel heavier than the craving itself.
Won or lost, silently
Twenty minutes later it's over, one way or the other — and no one else ever knew it happened. This is the moment NextStep is built for.
02 · Research
Four findings became four rules.
I read relapse-prevention literature (cravings as short, survivable waves; triggers as patterns), studied how recovery communities actually support each other, and mapped the craving-to-calm journey minute by minute. Everything the prototype does traces back to one of these rules.
Help is one tap, from anywhere
A persistent SOS button and Call Help action live on every screen. In a spiraling moment nobody navigates menus — the path from panic to a human voice or a grounding exercise is a single thumb-tap.
The app notices before the user asks
Mood check-ins feed a live risk score. When it climbs, the home screen quietly reorders itself — a 5-minute breathing exercise surfaces first, not a settings menu. Support arrives proactively, matched to the moment.
342 days, made visible
The sobriety ring, streaks, milestones and a timeline turn abstinence into identity. On a bad day, the strongest counter-argument to "one won't hurt" is watching what you'd be resetting.
Community and AI, privacy first
An AI companion with a personality you choose, plus an anonymous peer community. Stigma is the adoption barrier — so anonymous mode, biometric lock and end-to-end encryption are defaults, not options buried in settings.
03 · Prototype
One app for the good days and the hard ones.
These are live renders of the actual working prototype — four different screens of the same app. The risk-aware home dashboard, the AI companion chat, the journey view that makes progress tangible, and the anonymous community.
Launch it in a new tab and walk the full flow yourself — splash, sign-in, mood check-ins, profile and the SOS path.
Launch interactive prototype ↗rendered live from the prototype file
1Risk-aware home
mood analysis · smart recommendations
2AI companion
always awake · personality you choose
3Journey & milestones
342 days · streaks · timeline
4Community
anonymous by default · peer support
04 · Result
Built to win a 15-minute battle.
Every design decision is aimed at the same short window — the minutes when a craving peaks. Against the baseline of scheduled-only support, the concept closes the gap between the moment of risk and the moment of help.
Figures are illustrative of the concept's intended impact, not measurements from a deployed system.
