Mnēmē

Mnēmē began with the concept of synesthesia—a condition where the senses overlap, like seeing colors when hearing music. That idea sparked a deeper curiosity in us: what if memories could work the same way? Most people don’t have synesthesia, but we all experience moments where a smell, a sound, or even a texture instantly brings us back in time. We realized that memories often live in the senses, not just in photos or words. That led us to explore how we could design a digital experience that captures not just what happened, but how it felt— emotionally and physically.

We began by researching existing memory documentation tools and talking to users. Through competitor analysis and five user interviews, we found a clear gap: current platforms mostly focus on visual or written documentation. But people remembered moments in much richer ways. That inspired us to design Mnēmē as a digital time capsule— a gentle, sensory-first way to preserve memories using sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. We built the app in Figma, exploring both structured (audio, video, photo, text) and open-ended (color, texture, smell, taste) input styles, while developing a calm, nostalgic visual language. One of our biggest challenges was figuring out how to represent intangible senses like smell or touch in a digital format, but those explorations made the design process both playful and meaningful.

What we are proud of is how Mnēmē invites people to reflect and not just document by having surprise revisits of memories. The surprise happens in small, often overlooked moments, and helps users reconnect with feelings they did not even know they had forgotten. We learned that designing for emotion is just as important as usability, and that people are eager for tools that feel more human and personal. Going forward, we hope to expand Mnēmē with features like AI-generated tags to categorise better (apart from the current time and senses filters) and maybe even wearable integrations to help passively log sensory data.