AXIS — The Story Behind the Project

Inspiration

It started with a grandmother's ENT appointment.

One of our teammates accompanied their grandmother to a routine checkup. The doctor pointed something out that stuck with us: she believed she was walking in a straight line — but she wasn't. Her vestibular system, the fluid in her inner ear that governs balance, was quietly misfiring. She had no idea.

That moment sent us down a rabbit hole. We discovered Equilibrioception — the human sense of gravitational orientation. When it works, you never notice it. When it breaks down, the result is disorientation, nausea, and anxiety.

That's when we connected it to something universal: motion sickness during travel. Your vestibular system detects motion your eyes don't see — or your eyes see stillness your body doesn't feel. The brain interprets this mismatch as a threat.

One in three people are highly susceptible. In 2026 — with a screen in every seat and a phone in every hand — nobody had solved it. We decided to try.

How We Built It

The screens and presentation were designed in Figma.

For the demo, we used Figma Make. Our core interaction — a screen that counter-rotates to stay level while the device tilts — was something we envisioned clearly but couldn't prototype manually in a convincing way. Figma Make let us build a live interactive demo where anyone can drag a slider to bank a virtual plane and watch the AXIS screen stay perfectly level in real time, while the unprotected screen tilts with the aircraft.

It turned an invisible concept into something anyone could feel in seconds.

Challenges We Faced

The biggest challenge was demonstrating a physical sensation on a slide. Motion sickness is something you feel — not something you can explain with bullet points.

We tried manually prototyping the tilt compensation in Figma using frame states and transitions, but it was rigid and unconvincing. The interaction needed to feel fluid and real. Figma Make solved this — building the counter-rotation demo let us show the actual mechanic rather than just describe it. That was the turning point for the whole project.

What We Learned

Designing for an invisible sense forces intentionality that designing for sight or sound doesn't require. You can't show the user what equilibrioception feels like. You can only build an interface that earns their nervous system's trust.

We also learned that the best speculative design isn't fantastical — it's one software layer away from being real. AXIS needs no new hardware. Every gyroscope it needs already exists in the device in your pocket.

And the most important lesson — the best design problems aren't found in trend reports. They're found in waiting rooms.

The hardware already exists in your pocket. The software starts here.

Built With

• figma
• figmamake