How do you make a mental health app people actually want to use? Take a page from podcasts and Pixar

SAN FRANCISCO — Making medicines isn’t about aesthetics. Your pill doesn’t need to be pretty to work.

But with mental health apps, good design is half the battle. App makers have to be able to translate traditional therapy techniques into easy exercises that people can flip through on their phones. They have to make it responsive and, in theory, they have to make it effective. They also have to convince people the app is something they can trust — and can turn to when they’re feeling anxious.

That can take a village: To build Daylight, an app for anxiety, one digital health company relied on psychologists, animators, podcasters, designers, scriptwriters, product managers, and software engineers. The creators, Big Health, even called in a longtime Pixar animator and the former