03 Finding
Abstract visuals lower the pressure
Color, shape, and motion help people make sense of emotions without having to name them.
Murillo-Llorente, 2021Design decisionShow the day as color, not data
Context
Personal Concept Project
Timeline
Winter 2026
Team
Solo
Role
Product Designer
Scope of Work
Hardware Exploration
Sketching
Prototyping
Interaction Design
Figma Make
Overview
Reflection tools ask for words people don’t have
Mental health weighs on most young adults daily. Yet reflection tools still ask them to write it all out at night, when they’re most drained.
of young adults (18–34) say mental health is a significant daily concern.
National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2024
Desk research
Effort was the real barrier
This was a short side project, so I leaned on published research. Three findings set the direction.
1 / 3
— Empathy map, synthesized from research
The framing
Does reflection have to be written down?
Journaling takes the kind of focus people run out of by evening. So I designed around noticing instead of writing.
A journal asks for
Groundwork asks for
Effort
Focus at the end of a draining day
A few seconds, whenever you’re ready
Input
Sentences about how you feel
A word, a photo, or a quick drawing
Noticing
Up to you to remember
The ring notices through the day
What you keep
Pages of text to reread
A canvas of color and texture
How might we support young adults to meaningfully reflect on their daily emotional experiences when traditional, language-heavy reflection methods feel too effortful or overwhelming?
Problem statement
Solution
A ring that notices, and an app that doesn’t ask for much
Anchor is an AI ring that learns what your normal looks like and notices when your body drifts from it. Groundwork, its companion app, turns those signals into something you can reflect on at night.
01 / Anchor ring
Grounding in the moment, without a screen
Anchor senses stress without asking for attention. When it spikes, the ring pulses and glows softly, a cue you can feel without reaching for your phone, which is often where the stress came from.
02 / Adding a moment
A moment, not a journal entry
A gentle nudge invites you to reflect when you’re ready, not at a set time. A word, a photo, or a quick drawing is enough, because a full sentence is too much to ask at the end of the day.
03 / Reflection canvas
The day becomes a canvas, not a chart
Groundwork turns the ring’s signals into color and texture instead of scores. A number asks you to grade your day; color just lets you notice it.
How patterns emerge
Feelings you can see are easier to name.
01 It starts by just showing you
Your day appears as color and texture. There’s nothing to fill in, so looking is enough.
02 You start to see yourself in it
The same colors return on similar days, and you begin to notice what affects you, and when.
03 Then you name it
Putting a word to a color turns what you’d normally keep inside into a feeling you understand.
Exploration
Sketching wearables before picking one
I sketched every form I could think of before landing on a ring, then designed the ring and app side by side so they’d feel like one thing.
01 Every form I considered
Rings, a watch, a fabric watch, a necklace, and a skin patch, each judged on comfort, subtlety, and whether it could glow.
02 The ring and the app
Organic ring shapes with LED light, next to an app that turns the day’s body signals into art you can tag with a word, a photo, or a short note.
Defining the job
Designing for one tired person at the end of the day
I built the project around Jason, a student juggling school and work. When he gets home drained, he wants to decompress and make sense of how the day affected him, so he can feel calmer before bed. I storyboarded his whole day to see where the ring and the app each had a job.
*Storyboard sketches generated with Google Gemini.
01 Passive sensing
Jason wears Anchor all day. It captures signals without asking for attention.
02 In-the-moment grounding
When his stress rises, the ring gives a subtle haptic and light cue.
03 End-of-day exhaustion
By evening he’s overloaded, with nothing left for journaling.
04 A gentle invite
Groundwork nudges him to reflect whenever he’s ready.
05 Adding a moment
He adds a word or a photo to a canvas built from his day.
06 Closing the day
The canvas and the ring respond to his breath as he winds down.
Prototyping
Testing how it feels before building it
A glowing ring is hard to judge on a screen, so I made one from paper, with a clip-on strip standing in for the light. Wearing it told me more than a render would have.
Drag, tap, or use the arrow keys to compare.
Wizard of Oz test
Then I acted out the ring and app together on video, faking the parts that didn’t exist yet. Watching it back, the ring felt bolted on, like a gadget off to the side.
The iteration
Bringing the ring into the reflection
The first prompt left you with a blank box and nothing to go on. Adding a live pulse from Anchor gives you something to look at first, so the feeling is easier to put into words.
Before
After
Where it landed
What I’d want to find out next
Groundwork hasn’t been tested with real users yet. The next step would be finding out whether it actually makes reflection feel easier on a tired weeknight.
I’d also push the ring’s physical form further. Most AI rings are plain bands built for performance tracking, and there’s room for shapes and materials that feel more like grounding than measuring.
And before it’s real, it needs to handle what could go wrong: a ring that misreads stress, nudges that start to feel like nagging, body data people don’t want shared, and a canvas that works for people who can’t rely on color.
Reflection didn’t need more words. It needed less effort.
Reflection
What I learned
Don’t polish too early
I jumped to polished screens before exploring how the ring and app behave together. Next time I’d stay rough longer, so the whole system gets explored, not just the UI.
AI as a design partner
I used Google Gemini to generate storyboard sketches and Figma Make to vibe-code parts of the app. That let me spend more time on ideas and less on production.