NURA

Inspiration

Every stress response starts in the body — 10 to 20 minutes before the mind catches up. Your leg is already shaking. Your grip is already tight. Your breathing has already shifted. By the time you consciously feel stressed, the window for a small intervention has closed.

We looked for a tool that could catch that gap. Every wellness app we found was either self-report ("how do you feel?" — useless when you can't perceive what you can't perceive) or post-hoc ("here's yesterday's stress score" — useless because the moment has passed). Nothing operated in real time, in the predictive window, using signals the body was already producing.

That's where NURA started. Not a new sensor — a new way of reading existing sensors in combination, and a new way of communicating with a nervous system that's already activated.

What it does

NURA detects pre-stress signal clusters through sensors already in your phone and watch — gyroscope, pressure, accelerometer, heart rate, temperature, keyboard, calendar, location. When three or more signals from at least two categories converge within a temporal window, NURA identifies your unique pre-stress signature before you consciously feel it.

It then communicates through three levels: a watch haptic pulse that begins nervous system regulation below conscious awareness, a lock screen that shifts to warm sage with one line of text ("you've got 14 minutes"), and a pattern-adaptive landing screen that adjusts its structure based on whether you're accelerating (Escalator), withdrawing (Shutdown), or burning out over days (Oscillator).

The app includes personalized protocols ranked by your own body's data, a private AI conversation space (the Rant Space) that matches your energy before guiding you down, a trusted circle that sends action suggestions to people who care about you without ever sharing your data, and a weekly report that tracks how often you catch your own signals before NURA does.

The success metric: when your self-detection ratio reaches 80%, NURA has done its job. The product's success is measured by its own disappearance.

How we built it

We started with psychophysiology research on autonomic nervous system latency and polyvagal theory to ground the concept in science. We designed the full product in Figma — over 30 screens across 10 prototype tabs covering onboarding, the three-level intervention flow, pattern-adaptive landing screens, the Rant Space conversation, the trusted circle, the Surface History timeline, and multiple temporal states (Day 7 calibration, 11-day cumulative load, calm state).

Every visual decision is documented: warm linen background (#F4F1EC) for lower cortisol association, sage (#7B9E7B) for calm without cultural bias, amber (#D4883A) for salience without sympathetic activation. Typography pairs Instrument Serif (warmth) with DM Sans (clarity) and DM Mono (data). The frosted glass material system follows iOS 26 design conventions.

The video was produced using Clipchamp with voiceover generated through ElevenLabs. Presentation deck built in Figma Slides.

Challenges we ran into

The 14-day calibration period was a retention risk — two weeks of no interventions before the product works. We solved it with a micro-reveal disclosure curve: daily breadcrumbs on the lock screen that build curiosity without premature intervention.

The Shutdown pattern created a design paradox — the user has no energy for decisions, but showing nothing means not helping. We solved it with a landing screen that has one button and validates inaction ("or just sit here").

The trusted circle feature's biggest misuse risk was intimate partner surveillance, not institutional abuse. We addressed it architecturally with stealth mode, rate-limited suggestions, and over-monitoring detection.

The Rant Space voice was the hardest challenge. Making an AI companion that doesn't sound like a chatbot, a therapist, or a wellness app — that matches your energy, reframes without prescribing, and delivers action only when you ask for it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The pattern-adaptive landing screens. Same product, same entry point, structurally different interfaces based on the user's nervous system state. The Escalator user sees three choices. The Shutdown user sees one button and vast empty space. This isn't different copy — it's different architecture.

The Surface History — a timeline showing every invisible intervention NURA delivered (haptic pulses, lock screen shifts, music tempo changes). Making the invisible layer of the product visible, retrospectively, without interrupting the ambient experience in real time.

The Rant Space conversation. "ahh the sarah + review combo. that one always gets you" and "you're not spiraling, you're venting. big difference" and "there she is." Two words that say: I know you. I was waiting for this version of you to show up.

The self-obsolescence metric. A wellness product that measures its own disappearance. We believe that's the only honest way to build in this space.

What we learned

The most important insight: the interface should be proportional to the user's nervous system state. Activated body, minimal screen. Calm body, complex screen. This principle changed how we think about adaptive design.

We also learned that the strongest design decisions are exclusions. No stress score. No notifications. No dark mode. No navigation in distress mode. No loading spinners. Each absence has a rationale. Strong design is defined by what it deliberately leaves out.

What's next for NURA

Near term: user testing the calibration micro-reveal curve to validate the 14-day retention model. Exploring sensor feasibility partnerships to validate which signals current consumer hardware can reliably detect at the required resolution.

Medium term: opt-in anonymized aggregate pattern data — the first large-scale map of human pre-stress signatures, differential-privacy protected, with all anonymization happening on-device before any data leaves the phone.

Long term: expanding beyond phone and watch to ambient surfaces — smart lighting that shifts color temperature during detection, workspace audio that subtly adjusts, car interfaces that respond to commute-stress patterns.

The vision: a generation of users who learned to feel what NURA once had to show them. The tool's ultimate success is a world where it's no longer needed.

Built With

• clipchamp
• figma