Project Story

Inspiration

The inspiration for our project came from a personal experience within our team. One of our teammates experiences scent sensitivities that significantly impact her physical and emotional wellbeing. Hearing firsthand how fragranced environments can trigger discomfort and health symptoms made the issue feel tangible and important to address.

We were also intrigued by the concept of smell harassment—the idea that strong fragrances in public spaces can unintentionally harm others. This led us to explore whether technology could help people better understand and navigate scent-heavy environments. Our goal became finding a way to translate the sense of smell, which is difficult to quantify, into meaningful information that could support the wellbeing of people sensitive to fragrances.

What We Learned

One of the biggest lessons we learned during this project was the importance of narrowing our scope. During the discovery phase, our original goal was to design for anyone sensitive to smells in their environment. However, after receiving feedback from our mentor, we realized that this approach was too broad and risked scope creep.

We ultimately focused on individuals with allergies and asthma, since fragrance exposure can cause more severe health effects for this group. This helped us define clearer user needs and design decisions.

We also learned the value of continuous experimentation and iteration. Using tools like Figma Make allowed us to prototype multiple ideas quickly and refine our concept through testing and feedback.

How We Built the Project

Our process began with brainstorming different problems and senses we could focus on. After identifying smell as an interesting and underexplored area, we consulted with a mentor to discuss feasibility and refine the scope of our idea.

We used a collaborative FigJam board to generate and organize ideas. To better understand the problem space, we conducted a preliminary interview with our teammate who experiences scent sensitivities. This helped us build empathy and identify real-world challenges.

From there, we:

Created a user persona
Conducted market research on existing solutions
Performed contextual research on fragrance sensitivity and health impacts
Identified multiple use cases for our solution

Once we narrowed down the concept, we defined our core features and navigation structure. We used Figma Make to prototype several design approaches and visualization ideas.

To structure our concept, we generated a design brief using Claude, which helped clarify our problem statement and solution direction. This brief then became the base prompt for generating our final prototype.

We iterated on the prototype using 20+ additional prompts, focusing on improving the user experience around one key use case. Throughout this process, we refined the interface with visual design principles and conducted informal user testing with teammates.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges was controlling our scope within the limited time available for the project. Early on, we explored many ideas and had to decide which features were essential and which could be removed.

We also had to determine:

Which KPIs would best measure success
What core features were truly necessary
Which primary stakeholders to prioritize

Another challenge was finding the right balance between realism and speculative design. Because the project was built for the FigBuild event, we needed to design around capabilities that may not yet fully exist while still keeping the concept grounded and meaningful.

Despite these challenges, the process helped us better understand how to design for health-related experiences and reinforced the importance of iteration, collaboration, and clear design priorities.