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Monthly data metric - of you brain space
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Daily Recap of your brain space
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Homescreen - explaining the capacity of your brain
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Onboarding Screen
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Onboarding Screen
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Splash screen
Inspiration
Everyone knows the feeling that your brain isn't stressed or tired, it's just full. Numb. We realized this isn't burnout. It's cognitive sediment: unprocessed thoughts, unfinished reactions, and abandoned decisions layering up. The brief challenged us to make something invisible about human sensory experience visible and actionable. We asked: what if you could see the terrain of your own mind?
What it does
SETTLE makes the invisible visible. It shows you the unprocessed thoughts, decisions, and emotions your mind is holding as a living terrain of colored shapes organized into daily layers. Vivid shapes are thoughts still suspended in your mind. Faded shapes have been processed and settled. You can tap any suspended thought to settle it through a guided 2-5 minute micro-process: name the feeling, draft a response, make the decision, or simply acknowledge and release it. Over time, the Core Sample reveals your cognitive patterns, what's creating invisible pressure. The Forecast predicts tomorrow's load and suggests what to settle tonight. The goal isn't an empty mind. It's a settled one.
How we built it
We created a custom Guidelines.md and theme.css for Figma Make that defined our entire design system, warm cream palette, Barlow font + DM Sans typography, 9 category shapes (each a unique geometric form for accessibility), and the core visual rule: vivid = unprocessed, faded = settled. We used Claude as a design thinking partner to pressure-test the concept, generate structured persona data, and write consistent content. The AI helped us think but it didn't design for us.
Challenges we ran into
Figma Make struggled with organic geological visualizations, so we pivoted from terrain textures to shape clusters inspired by How We Feel. We switched from dark to light mode mid-build when dark screens proved hard to read in demo recordings. And we had to ruthlessly cut scope, from two personas to one, from 22 screens to 16. So every screen directly serves a judging criteria or brief requirement.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We built a fully interactive prototype with animated settling flows, when a user processes a thought, the shape physically drops and ripples spread from where it lands. That micro-animation took multiple iterations to feel right, but it's the most satisfying moment in the app. We also developed a complete data-driven metrics system: Carol's Core Sample visualizes 146 individually mapped fragments across 7 days. Every number in the app traces back to real persona data we built day-by-day. And we designed the entire visual system 9 unique category shapes, 4 fragment states, vivid-to-faded transitions.
What we learned
The geological metaphor changed everything. "Settling a thought" feels completely different from "completing a task" is a same action, different emotional design. The hardest problem was designing the manipulation layer, not just showing cognitive load, but creating micro-processes that actually help users close open mental loops.
What's next for Untitled (Settle)
Integrating real passive sensing using screen time, app switching, and calendar data from the phone to automatically generate daily layers without manual logging. Partnering with cognitive science researchers to validate the "cognitive sediment" framework against existing interoception and cognitive load research. Building out the settling micro-processes for all 9 categories with input from therapists and behavioral designers. And exploring an Apple Watch companion that uses haptic rhythms to nudge users toward settling during natural transition moments in their day.
Built With
- claude
- design
- figma
- figma-make
- figma-prototyping
- figma-slides
