Lumin

Inspiration

We were inspired to solve the problem of the disconnection between people’s emotions and their bodies. Many individuals in today's society have faced a dilemma of misunderstanding their mind, thoughts, emotions, and how such factors can largely affect their bodies. Based off this information, we discovered a sense beyond just the typical five: interoception, a bodily system in which the brain develops an awareness to the internal senses. Interoception allows people to maintain homeostasis and thus regulate their mental health, identifying both physical and emotional needs.

What it does

To further an understanding of an external sense, we aimed to provide context and holistic health insights into stress/comfort levels through metrics like HRV, temperature, heart rate, and sweat. These measurements are taken from a magnetic earring that a user can easily clip onto their ear and gather data about their health. From these levels, we can logically advise users how to regulate and manage their emotions, achieving a healthy and restorative balance within their lifestyles. Furthermore, a user's emotions can automatically be gathered and visualized into a seemingly organic and moving sphere, located on the front home screen. The organism-like creature creates an abstract image that aids users to understand what, how, and why they're feeling a certain emotion through shapes and colors, not direct labels. These orb structures can additionally be shared across users within the app, such as families and friends. The intimacy level can further be adjusted based off a user's level of comfort in sharing the information with other people. As a result, this feature helps increase connectedness and emotional understanding/perception of their close friends and loved ones.

How we built it

We decided to build the idea by initially ideating and designing in the typical Figma platform, utilizing AI softwares like Claude Sonnet to expand and develop features for inspiration. From these designs, we began building in FigmaMake where we were able to quickly adjust padding, colors, and components. For the main attraction of our app, the organic orb, we went through several iterations through Claude Sonnet to adjust the particle size, movement type, and colors which was then eventually imported into FigmaMake.

Challenges we ran into

Using FigmaMake with little experience created several challenges, including coming up with prompts that targeted specific components as well as the overall formatting/spacing of the app. Whenever we imported frames and pages into FigmaMake, the proportions and layout would mess up which would take significant timing to adjust and fix them. Additionally, the organic orb we developed required multiple iterations in order to emphasize the accessibility and drive an 'emotion experience' each time a user opens Lumin.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite all the challenges we faced, we’re incredibly proud of each other and how we brought the thought-provoking concept of an “external sense” to life. We were able to transform raw, psychological, and biological metrics into something that's intuitive and visually expressive. Lumin is designed as something that feels alive, something that represents the beauty of humanity and our complexity. We successfully designed a dynamic emotional orb that can respond to data and created an overall visual system that connects a user's mind and their body. Yet, most importantly, we developed an experience. One that helps our users feel understood by their own bodies in a way that feels gentle, artistic, and beautifully human.

What we learned

Throughout the overall designing process, we learned how emotions and physiology are difficult and how we can translate the relationship into a digital experience, without overwhelming users. We additionally learned about channeling our own sense of interoception and how to visualize such emotional states without simply relying on labels. Furthermore, color, movement, and form can all be utilized to communicate subtle internal shifts, demonstrating the importance of accessibility and clarity when working with biometric data where we provide visualizations, reasoning and understanding of the numbers instead of just designing graph charts. On the technical side, we were able to gain a lot of hands‑on experience with AI‑assisted design tools, iterative prototyping, and all of the challenges of integrating generative visuals into a functional interface.

What's next for Lumin

Going forward, we want to expand Lumin into a fully built-out emotional and biometric visualization system. This includes actually prototyping and breaking down the anatomy of the metal earring, such as locating sensors and exploring signals like respiration and micro‑movements. Additionally, reshaping the organic orb to include more than just one uniform color since humans often tend to be more emotionally and physically complex. The emotional intelligence of the orb could also be developed to allow it to evolve as a user continues to use our app, reflecting long‑term patterns in a user’s emotional‑body connection. We also aim to fully build out daily, weekly, and monthly reflections and holistic insights that help users understand their internal senses and ongoing body, mind, and emotional changes with increased clarity and depth. Overall, we strongly envision Lumin evolving beyond just an app, but rather a companion that helps people build healthier relationships with their emotions and the people around them.