Lumen - The Companion

We started with a stat that unsettled us — 61% of symptoms reported in a health assessment are forgotten before the patient is even seen. That's not a memory problem. That's a design problem. We kept coming back to the same question: what if the real barrier to mental healthcare isn't access, it's articulation?

That became LUMEN. A soft, sensor-embedded plushie companion that passively tracks cortisol, heart rate variability, micro-expressions, and vocal tone — translating what your body knows into language your therapist can actually use. No journaling, no self-reporting. It just listens. That data compiles into a Burnout Card — a professional-grade emotional report the user chooses to share, on their terms.

Building it taught us that the hardest design challenge wasn't the technology — it was tone. Designing for emotional vulnerability means every decision has to reduce the burden on the user, not add to it. We cut features relentlessly until what remained felt genuinely human.

What we're most proud of is that the plushie isn't a gimmick — it's the whole argument. That your most important health interface shouldn't be a screen. It should feel like something you actually want to hold.

Next, we want to validate the Burnout Card with real therapists and push further into crisis response design. LUMEN is just getting started.

Built With

• figma
• make