Capsule

Prototype link: Figma

Describe your project

To be human is to experience life as it unfolds—to hear, see, and think in the moment. Most people don’t journal—not because they don’t want to, but because it feels like work. Instead of treating journaling as structured writing, Capsule reimagines journaling as an effortless act of gathering, collecting, and curating moments – a modern hunter-gatherer approach to self-reflection. Users can capture thoughts through photos, voice notes, or short texts without the pressure to immediately organize or articulate everything, eliminating the friction that often prevents them from getting started. Over time, AI gently surfaces patterns and themes via fun, shareable cards, turning journaling into a dynamic experience.

This process transforms journaling from a task into an engaging, effortless activity—more like scrapbooking to collect pieces of experience. Capsule allows users to compile life’s snippets into lasting time capsules, helping you stay connected to yourself and the world around you.

Describe your research process and findings.

Our research process consisted of user surveys and interviews, designed to gain insights into user behaviors and opinions on journaling. We gathered a total of 35 survey responses and conducted 5 user interviews.

From the survey (link), we found that the overwhelming majority of respondents viewed journaling as “too much work” and described themselves as “too lazy” to journal consistently. Most saw it as requiring significant active effort—whether curating materials like photos, tickets, and receipts for physical scrapbooks or putting in mental effort to write. Another key insight was that users value multimedia entries.

Many respondents noted that a major advantage of digital journals is their ability to combine photos, audio, and text in one place. One response to the prompt What’s a feature missing from conventional journals? stated, “To visualize both text and visual elements in an easily navigable manner.”

For those who do not currently journal, it is not a priority in their daily lives. However, most expressed interest in journaling if it were easier and acknowledged its value for self-reflection and memory-keeping. In short, most people want to journal—but the process feels too effortful.

Building on these findings, we conducted five in-person interviews using pre-written scripts (link) and asked follow-up questions based on participants’ responses. These interviews provided deeper insights into user behaviors and preferences for a reimagined journaling app. We discovered several elements that are crucial for user satisfaction:

1. A major recurring theme was the need for ease of use. One interviewee noted, “It'd be nice to have a transcription feature; talking is faster than typing, which is faster than writing.” The app should minimize friction, allowing users to effortlessly capture thoughts and moments.
2. Another key finding was that users want journaling to feel more engaging and fun. Many expressed interest in aesthetically pleasing layouts and interactive features such as stickers to enhance the experience.
3. Additionally, users emphasized the importance of being able to retrieve past entries easily, highlighting the need for a strong search function to help them revisit memories without hassle.

Consolidating our research, we have defined a central product vision for our app: Capsule is a multimedia journaling experience designed to minimize user friction, allowing users to effortlessly capture thoughts through photos, voice notes, or short texts. Capsule will feature intuitive search and interactive elements to enhance usability and engagement.

Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions?

One-tap entries: We’ve made jotting down thoughts, recording audio, and taking photos possible in one swift action. Our research indicates that people perceive journal entries to be time-consuming and requiring high effort. As such, we’ve attempted to design Capsule’s UX to have as little friction as possible – allowing users to get started with one tap buttons immediately from the landing page.

Gentle AI: AI works subtly in the background, surfacing insights as nudges rather than structured intel. AI-powered journaling tools often feel too clinical, invasive, or analytical. Instead of stats and dashboards, our use of AI provides fun, wrapped-style recaps with silly notes, inspired by apps like Spotify Wrapped and Apple Memories.

Capsule recaps: Fun, shareable recaps with insights into your journaling. A common problem participants in our user survey mentioned was that they had a lack of motivation to journal and stated there was little reward with journaling. To alleviate these problems, we decided to incorporate a wrapped-style summary of users’ entries with cute graphics and type that would motivate users in adding more entries to receive more insights.

Orange, geometric characters: Capsule features little playful, personality-filled characters in confirmations and recaps. A common problem participants in our user survey mentioned was that they had a lack of motivation to journal and stated there was little reward with journaling. To alleviate these problems, we decided to incorporate playful, diverse characters into our design to add extra joy and motivation with capturing entries.

Built With

• capcut
• figma
• jitter
• miro