Case Study
The paper was published at ACM-TEI 2026
Fall ’25 · 8 weeks
BACKGROUND
Offer generalized advice that rarely fits the specific moment stress actually hits.
Give tactile, sensory grounding in the moment, but can’t surface patterns or progress.
Turns stress into a metric to manage, which can create more pressure than the relief it promises.
OUR OPPORTUNITY
INTRODUCING
Hover over each step to see it in action →
Hold the SomaSeed. The pressure gives your body something to focus on while the storm passes.
Every squeeze is logged in the background. No forms, no check-ins, no extra weight on your mind.
A digital flower grows from how you coped, shaped by your moments, your choices and how you cared for yourself.
Flowers collect into a living record. Instead of numbers, you see a story of resilience taking shape.
RESEARCH & IDEATION
Three patterns showed up again and again.
“Sometimes all I need is a small reset. A walk, a hot shower. I don’t want an app telling me how to feel.”
When stress hits, people reach for what’s closest and most familiar. Relief is habitual, not prescribed. The system needs to sit alongside existing rituals, not replace them.
“Calming music and plushies really help me decompress. My roommate needs total silence. We’re complete opposites.”
What grounds one person can overwhelm another. Silence soothes some; others need ambient noise, a scent, a texture. There’s no universal trigger, only personal ones.
“I wish I had more time to take care of myself, but my weeks are packed. I fall off the wagon every other Tuesday.”
Everyone talked about wanting structure: a wind-down, a check-in, a sleep schedule. But consistency collapses under deadlines. The system has to be forgiving, not punishing.
THE JOURNEY WE DESIGNED
Hover any step to see what’s happening under the hood.
Day starts calm
Something throws you off
Squeeze the SomaSeed
If still overwhelmed
Release the weight
Lighter, more prepared
DESIGNING THE OBJECT
A tactile, squeezable seed that listens to your body and responds with light. It translates stress into something you can feel, not read.
Four micro-sensors in the shell pick up the signals your body gives off before you even notice them.
When it senses stress, the seed responds in four ways your body can feel, no screens required.
Picked up from subtle pressure shifts as the shell flexes.
Read through contact with the palm.
How tightly you’re holding on tells us how tense you are.
Tiny moisture changes signal rising tension.
A slow rhythm your body instinctively syncs to.
Light expands and contracts, leading your breath.
Gentle heat where your palm meets the shell.
Nothing to read. Nothing to dismiss. Just something to hold.
CREATING THE APP
No judgment, no scores. Just a calm, guided response that meets you where you are.
The app surfaces only what’s needed: a short calming sequence and suggested actions to find peace in the moment of stress, while quietly logging each squeeze to build patterns over time.
The app gently nudges you to reflect on your day and think about how you coped with its stresses. It’s about staying in touch with your emotions and facing them head-on, rather than sweeping them under the rug.
Over time, the system builds on the emotional language of each day. We introduced a garden view that shows every moment you’ve moved through, with different flowers standing for different stress patterns, so your progress feels more like something growing than something measured. And because AI summaries are never a complete picture, the app is upfront about it, giving you the option to revisit your full journal whenever you want.
OUTCOMES
Three reactions kept coming up in different words: the emotional pull, the calm of the visual metaphor and the desire to share it with others.
“I would actually use something like this in my life.”
“The garden idea feels peaceful. It’s calming just to look at.”
“I’d love to bring this into my therapy sessions.”
The most interesting feedback wasn’t about what we’d built. It was about what people wished it could do.
Could the system spot patterns before a stress moment hits, and gently warn the user? A shift from logging to anticipating.
Multiple testers wanted a way to invite loved ones into their garden: a therapist, a parent, a partner. Coping, but connected.
