A mood-adaptive motivational companion for iOS, built accessibility-first from the very first screen — it checks in on how someone actually feels, then matches sessions and affirmations to their mood and goals.
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Role
Product Designer — solo, end to end
Timeline
22 Jun – 10 Jul 2026 · 3-week sprint
Tools
Figma · FigJam · Lyssna · Google Forms
Deliverable
iOS onboarding + core flow, hi-fi prototype
Context
Individual project · WBS Coding School
Design system
Documented, accessibility-first
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Fully solo — every stage from competitive research and interviews through synthesis, IA, brand direction, UI, and the final prototype is my own work.
Luma is a mood-adaptive motivational companion for iOS. Instead of generic daily affirmations, it checks in on how someone actually feels, then matches sessions and affirmations to their mood and goals — with an accessibility layer (audio-first, colour-blind-safe, full VoiceOver support) built in from day one rather than retrofitted at the end.
An individual bootcamp project set in Health & Wellness, with a deliberate constraint: pick a genuine accessibility blocker and design a core feature that's high-utility for extreme-use-case users while making the product better for everyone. Hard guardrails throughout: no clinical advice, no diagnostic or therapeutic claims — trackers and lifestyle tools only, never medical software. And a research bar to clear before the concept could even proceed: a minimum of 10 survey responses and 5 interviews, or pivot.
The motivational-app market is crowded but shallow. I Am has affirmations with no mood tracking. Daylio tracks mood but offers no content. Reflectly journals but personalises weakly. Across the category, accessibility is nearly nonexistent — of the eight apps I audited, only one even declared App Store accessibility support, and that turned out to be a passive checkbox, not intentional in-app design.
The question that shaped the whole project:
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How do we build an app that adapts to how someone actually feels day to day — so a positive mindset genuinely sticks — while being usable by people with visual impairments or colour blindness from the very first screen?
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Tools: competitive audit of 8 apps · Google Forms survey · 5 moderated interviews · FigJam for synthesis.
Competitive analysis (8 apps) — I Am, Finch, Reflectly, Headspace, Gratitude, ThinkUp, Daylio, Selfpause — surfaced three gaps: no app combines mood check-in, adaptive content, and progress tracking in one flow; accessibility is an industry-wide blind spot; and most retention models lean on streak guilt rather than no-guilt consistency.
Survey (17 responses). 71% were open to listening to affirmations instead of reading them — a strong signal that audio needed to be a first-class experience, not a secondary mode. 65% said punitive streaks stress them out more than they motivate. People rated 4.3 / 5 on interest in an app that adapts to their goals and remembers where they left off. And the single most common reason people said they'd abandon an app like this: the content "felt generic."
"I'd like it to not be another AI generic thing." — survey respondent
5 user interviews met the project's research bar. Audio was a repeated preference (screen-time reduction, multitasking, commutes); punitive streaks and aggressive notifications reliably caused churn; and cluttered, deep-navigation UIs were named directly as reasons people abandoned otherwise-good apps — one participant said a therapist-recommended anxiety app made her more anxious because "the layout gave me more anxiety."