Seren combines “siren” and “serenity.” It represents noticing internal signals when something feels off, while helping users reflect on those moments to find clarity and calm.
Inspiration
We started with a feeling most women know but can't explain: that moment when something feels off before you can articulate why. A meeting that felt wrong before anyone said a word. A decision your gut resisted before your brain caught up. We kept asking: why does that signal exist, why do we dismiss it, and why has no one built anything to help us understand it?
That question led us to interoception - one of 22 to 33 documented human senses, and the one most responsible for what we call intuition. The science is real. The physiological signals are measurable. But no tool had ever treated interoception as something trainable. That gap became Seren.
What it does
Seren is a wearable-connected app that tracks, names, and helps you learn from your intuitive signals. A pendant worn at the sternum, more accurate than a wrist device for HRV and breathing, continuously reads five physiological markers: heart rate variability, breathing rhythm, heart rate, skin conductance, and motion. When these five together in a pattern associated with an intuition response, Seren flags it as a signal. The app then surfaces that moment in your Journal, invites you to reflect through writing or voice recording, and builds a personal signal library over time. The Insights screen connects the dots, showing you patterns across your signals that you couldn't see on your own. Over time, you stop second-guessing yourself. Not because you got braver, but because you have proof.
How we built it
We designed Seren entirely in Figma, using Figma Make to build an interactive prototype that simulates the full experience: from the Monitor screen with its living signal orb, to the Journal and Reflect flow, to the Insights dashboard with AI-generated pattern summaries.
The design language was intentional from the start: restrained, warm, nothing clinical. We referenced Celine, Bottega Veneta, and Kinfolk as visual anchors - generous negative space, a muted earth palette, Playfair Display paired with Jost. Every design decision was made to feel like something you'd want to wear and trust, not a health tracker you tolerate. We built the signal system with two named states: when it is Calm and when there's an Intuition Signal; each with its own color, behavior, and meaning. The pendant itself went through several form factor iterations before we landed on the sternum placement, which is both the most physiologically accurate position and the most emotionally resonant one.
Challenges we ran into
The hardest challenge was the speculative design tension. Interoception is real and measurable. The specific claim that a combination of physiological signals can reliably identify intuition as distinct from anxiety, excitement, or stress is not yet scientifically proven. We had to hold that honestly while still building something compelling and coherent. We also ran into real technical constraints in the prototype. Figma Make's browser sandbox blocks microphone access, so the voice recording feature we designed couldn't use a real mic. We solved it with a simulated transcription flow; animated waveform, word-by-word transcript appearing live, saving as a real journal entry, which actually felt more reliable and controllable for a demo context. Speaker coordination across four team members under a tight time constraint was its own challenge. Getting the script, the prototype walkthrough, and the handoffs to feel seamless took more rehearsal than we expected. But after going through all of these difficulties, we realized that it challenged us to build Seren even stronger with each hurdle.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud that Seren feels like a real product. The pendant form factor, the signal language, the Insights AI summary - none of it feels like just another project. It feels like something that could exist. We're proud of the speculative design move we made: taking a real, documented sense and asking what it would look like to train it. The brief gave us permission to imagine, and we used it fully. And we're proud of the pitch. Four people, one story, one voice - it holds together from the opening hook through the closing line.
What we learned
We learned that the most powerful design constraint is emotional honesty. Every time we tried to make Seren sound more certain than the science supports, it felt wrong. Leaning into the speculative framing, this is what could exist, this is what the signals suggest. It made the whole thing more believable, not less. We also learned that form factor is a design argument. Choosing a pendant over a watch isn't just aesthetic. It's a statement about what kind of relationship someone has with their own body data. That decision shaped everything downstream.
What's next for Seren by DesignHers
The immediate next step is validating the signal detection model; working with interoception researchers to identify whether the specific physiological pattern we're proposing is distinguishable from other high-arousal states like anxiety or excitement. Along with this, we would also scale the mobile app connected to the pendant and do further user testing.
From there: a hardware partnership for the pendant sensor, a closed beta with the target user group, and a deeper build of the Insights engine using longitudinal signal data.
The long-term vision is a sense you can actually develop. Not just a tracker. A teacher.
Built With
- figma
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