SOMA | Devpost

About the Project

Inspiration

We started from a future-focused prompt: not “which sense should we design for,” but what should be sensed in a future world where identity is increasingly shaped by algorithms, platforms, and performance. Social media, AI-driven feeds, and economic pressure all push people to perform a version of themselves that optimizes for approval instead of alignment with their own values. We kept circling back to authenticity, conviction, and performativity as three forces that quietly shape how “real” we feel in our own lives.

What We Built

Soma is an app–device ecosystem that acts as a non-judgmental mirror for your sense of authenticity over time. It measures three daily signals:

Authenticity – how closely your behavior aligns with your own values and baseline self.
Conviction – the strength and consistency of your beliefs across contexts.
Performativity – how much you’re adapting yourself to external expectations, social pressure, or trends.

Using biometric and contextual data (for example, stress, time of day, active apps, and social context), Soma maps how these signals rise and fall throughout your day. Instead of prescribing actions, it surfaces inflection points and then asks reflective, open-ended questions to help you interpret what the data might mean for you.

The core experience includes:

A values map that visualizes long‑held, emerging, and unexplored values as a living arrangement you can revisit and redefine.
Daily curves of authenticity, conviction, and performativity that highlight high/low moments and potential triggers.
A conversational buddy that prompts voice‑first or text reflections, turning raw sensing into intentional self‑inquiry.
A source view that traces how media, conversations, and platforms (for example, Spotify, YouTube, social apps) may be shaping your signals.

Our goal is not to tell users who they “really” are, but to help them notice patterns like “My conviction drops every time I talk about work with this person” or “I feel most authentic when I’m creating rather than scrolling.”

How We Built It

We followed a human‑centered design process:

Needfinding
We interviewed teens and young adults who had struggled with belonging, major transitions, or feeling “performed” online, including first‑generation students and recent immigrants. Participants described learning the value of authenticity over time, often after realizing that inauthentic choices had cost them joy, self‑expression, or alignment with their values.
Define
From this, we shaped point‑of‑view statements around people who feel easily influenced by others, who compromise their values to fit in, or who choose careers and identities based on external expectations. We framed our core question as: How might we help people notice when their actions and environments are nudging them away from their own values, and support them in choosing differently?
Ideate and Prototype
We explored different futures using the futures cone to position Soma in the gap between the probable (more performativity, less growth) and the preferable (autonomous, value‑aligned lives). We sketched multiple interaction models, then developed low‑fi and mid‑fi prototypes around a wearable and companion app that visualize signals, prompt reflection, and keep the user in control.

Throughout, we grounded the system in explicit design values: privacy, autonomy, inclusion, long‑term growth over quick fixes, and social good.

Challenges

We faced four main challenges:

Measuring something as abstract as authenticity
Authenticity is not a single metric; it’s a pattern across bodily signals, context, history, and intention. We addressed this by treating authenticity, conviction, and performativity as trends and hypotheses, not truths, and by always pairing data with user interpretation.
Avoiding surveillance and moral judgment
A tool that “senses you” can easily feel invasive or like it’s grading your character. We designed safeguards: granular consent for each data source, visible capture indicators, data minimization, and firm boundaries (no sharing with employers, insurers, or advertisers, no monitoring others). We also avoided claims like “we know your true self,” and instead framed outputs as possibilities for the user to accept, reject, or reinterpret.
Balancing insight with cognitive load
Many self‑tracking tools overwhelm users with charts they don’t know how to act on. We intentionally limited what’s shown on the main view, surfaced only key inflection points, and made deeper dives optional via reflective prompts and source breakdowns.
Ethical and emotional safety
Surfacing patterns of inauthenticity can be emotionally heavy, especially for people emerging from burnout or crisis. We avoided shame‑based language, “streaks,” or gamification that punishes low days, and instead framed growth as seasonal, with setbacks and regrowth expected. We also discussed protocols for distress signals, such as gently suggesting support resources and, with consent, notifying trusted contacts when needed.

What We Learned

Identity is ongoing work, not a destination. Users didn’t want to be restored to a “past self”; they wanted support for the continuous, messy process of becoming.
People are already sensing authenticity. They just lack language and mirrors. Many interviewees could describe when they felt “off” or “like a performance,” but had no structured way to notice patterns across time, contexts, and relationships.
Tools should inform, not decide. The most meaningful interactions came when the system asked, “What do you think this is picking up on?” and let users bring their own stories to the data.
Ethics must be designed in from the start. Questions about power, surveillance, and psychological impact can’t be bolted on at the end; they shaped our data model, interaction patterns, and visual framing from day one.

Ultimately, Soma is our attempt to design a new kind of sense: a continuous, contextual awareness of where your behavior is coming from (self, pressure, mimicry, or numbness) so you can choose who you’re becoming with more clarity and care.

Check out SOMA here!