Orb.
Designing a multisensory system that helps users preserve and relive meaningful moments in a more immersive, reflective, personal way.
TIMELINE
October 2024- May 2025
ROLE
UX Designer
UX researcher
TOOLS
Figma
Adobe
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Orb is a multisensory memory tool that helps people capture, reflect on, and relive meaningful moments more deeply. By combining photos and videos with emotion tagging, mood-color mapping, and music integration, Orb preserves not just what happened but how it felt — making nostalgia more vivid, personal, and immersive.
Watch a Video Demo
See Final Prototype
OUR CHALLENGE
People use photos and notes to remember what happened, but often lose the emotion they felt in that moment. Existing memory tools preserve events, but not the feeling — leading to faded emotions and less meaningful reflection over time.
INTRODUCTION
Why are memories so important?
Nostalgia and memories are integral to the human experience, allowing us to revisit moments that shape our identity. They help us relive the joy of a recent birthday party, the fondness of a childhood pet, or even allowing us to feel reconnected with with loved ones we've lost. Nostalgia not only preserves our past but also enriches our present by fostering emotional connections and shaping our sense of remembrance.
People take photos, write things down, but they often lose the emotion they felt in that moment.
Over time, the emotion fades—even if the memory stays.
We want to change that.
BACKGROUND
What is Sensory Memory?
Sensory memory is a fleeting form of memory that temporarily captures and retains sensory information (like sights, sounds, and smells) for a few seconds, enabling the brain to process and make sense of immediate experiences.Engaging multiple senses can reinforce a memory trace, making it more likely to be noticed and remembered
Visual
Auditory
Touch
Taste
Smell
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Understanding the Market Landscape
To better understand the strategies and features that resonate with users, we conducted a competitive analysis of four platforms: Spotify, BeReal, Locket, and LoveBox.
SPOTIFY
A music streaming service with personalized playlists, social listening features, and curated music experiences.
LOCKET
A photo-sharing app that lets friends send spontaneous images directly to each other’s home screens, fostering everyday connection.
BEREAL
A social platform centered on authenticity, prompting users to share real-time, unfiltered photos once a day.
LOVEBOX
A physical messaging device that pairs with an app, allowing users to send heartfelt notes and images through a tangible, interactive experience.
SWOT Analysis
By examining their strengths, weaknesses, and key functionalities, we gained insights into what works well, where they fall short, and how they engage their users.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS FINDINGS
Research Findings
01.
Personalization Drives Deeper Engagement – Platforms that adapt content and experiences based on individual user data tend to foster stronger emotional connections and higher retention. Personalized interactions make users feel understood and valued, encouraging repeated use.
02.
Collaboration & Shared Experiences Create Stronger Engagement- Apps that allow direct interaction or shared content creation tend to sustain user engagement better.
(Locket's decline could be attributed to its limited social reach—it’s exclusive to a small circle of friends, which restricts engagement opportunities compared to broader platforms.)
03.
Incentives & Notifications Keep Users Coming Back- FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) plays a key role in engagement. Push notifications and time-sensitive interactions are big for engagement. Apps that don’t effectively remind users or create a reason to return risk lower retention.
INTERVIEWS
Learning More Through User Interviews
To ensure our design effectively meets user needs, we conducted in-depth interviews with 14 participants across a diverse age range (15-60+ years old). Our goal was to understand how people preserve, recreate, and emotionally connect to past experiences using technology.
MAIN INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
What challenges do you face when trying to preserve or recreate emotional connections to past experiences?
How are you using technology to remember old/special moments?
How often do you use apps or products that remind you of strong sensory and memory experiences
Which sense brings back the most meaningful memories for you, and why?
How comfortable would you feel sharing personal (sensory related) data with an app?
When thinking about a sensory memory app, what would make it a part of your daily life?
Our Interview Key Findings ↴
Multi-Sensory Triggers Deepen Emotional Connections
Users strongly associate memories with sound, visuals, and even scents. Integrating voice notes, photos, and contextual sensory cues enhances recall and nostalgia.
Memories are Personal, Not Routine
Users don’t want memory preservation to feel like a daily chore. Instead, they prefer event-based prompts (e.g., “It’s been a year since this moment—want to revisit it?”).
Gamification Should Feel Meaningful, Not Forced
Features like streaks or memory “unboxing” encourage engagement, but users don’t want excessive gamification that makes memory-keeping feel like an obligation.
SURVEYS
Survey Structure & Key Focus Areas
After conducting in-depth interviews to explore how people emotionally connect to past experiences through sensory memory, we expanded our research with a broader survey to quantify these insights and prioritize key features. Our goal with the survey was to:
•Identify patterns in how different age groups engage with memory preservation tools.
•Understand which sensory triggers (sight, sound, smell, etc.) are most effective for recalling emotional moments.
•Prioritize features that users find most valuable in a sensory memory application.
To build on our qualitative insights, we designed a survey that:
•Captured demographic trends to see how memory preservation habits differ by age.
•Explored technology use by identifying the most common tools for storing and recalling memories (e.g., photo albums, voice memos, apps like Instagram, BeReal, or Spotify).
•Ranked feature priorities based on previous interview findings, helping us refine which functionalities to focus on in our design.
•Investigated emotional behavior—whether users tend to embrace or reject past moments, providing deeper psychological insight into memory engagement.
KEY SURVEY FINDINGS
Using Survey Data to Inform Design Decisions
The survey not only reinforced key findings from our interviews—such as the importance of reflection over routine and the need for customizable memory-sharing options. But it also revealed new insights that shaped our design direction. Specifically, we discovered:
Specifically, we discovered:
•A divide in privacy preferences, with users equally split between keeping memories private vs. sharing with close friends.
•An untapped opportunity in voice memos, which many users don’t currently use but see potential value in.
•A strong demand for a centralized memory hub, where users can store and access photos, voice recordings, notes, and videos in one place.
PERSONA
Meet Riley Andersen!
A persona was created because it helps us focus our design on the specific needs and behaviors of our target users, ensuring that every design decision supports their goals and improves their experience.
17
Seattle, WA
GOALS
Capture how she felt, not just what happened
Wants to reflect her memory privately
Understand emotional growth over time
PAINS
Finds most memory tools too routine or forced
Wants something that feels personal, not performative
NEEDS
Emotional memory logging (any time, any format)
Music, voice, photo, or text—depending on the day
Gentle prompts, not pressure
A space that evolves with her
BACKGROUND
Design Values
Design values were established to help us stay aligned with the core purpose and vision of the product. They kept us focused on what really matters, preventing us from getting distracted by unnecessary features or trends.
Reflection over routines
Sensory-first memory
Personal but not isolated
One place for everything
HOW MIGHT WE
Design a multi-sensory memory tool that helps users meaningfully capture, reflect on, and emotionally relive their life moments in a way that feels personal, immersive, and intuitive?
BRAINSTORMING AND IDEATION
Exploring Features & Design Directions
After analyzing our interview and survey findings, we moved into the ideation phase. Using collaborative white boarding and sticky-note exercises, we explored abstract concepts and potential key features that could bring our sensory memory tool to life.
We began by breaking down our research insights into two categories↴
ABSTRACT IDEAS
Broader conceptual themes that guided our approach to emotional connection and memory preservation.
KEY FEATURES
Concrete functionalities that aligned with user needs, ensuring an intuitive and meaningful experience.
A GLIMPSE INTO OUR PROCESS:
APPLICATION
Narrowing Down Features
Next, we translated these ideas into more concrete application features, identifying which concepts best aligned with our goals. This involved prioritizing functionalities that would effectively capture and enhance sensory memories, ensuring the app would deliver a meaningful and engaging user experience.
LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Exploring Early Concepts
I developed low-fidelity wireframes to quickly test different approaches for memory logging, mood tracking, and emotional visualization. These sketches allowed me to focus on structure and interaction first, before investing in visual design.
ESTABLISHING BRANDING
Creating a Nostalgic and Calming Space
We aimed to create a calming and nostalgic brand identity that reflects the emotional nature of reliving memories. To guide this, we developed mood boards that inspired our choices in typography, color, and sizing. Thoughtful branding is essential to evoke the right feelings and create a cohesive, inviting experience for users.
ITERATIONS
Usability Testing
We conducted usability testing to evaluate early prototypes, focusing on how users navigated the app, logged memories, and interacted with visual elements. These sessions helped validate core interactions and informed the next round of design iterations.
Logging a Memory
Users struggled with navigation and logging flows, noting unclear hierarchy and difficulty uploading multiple modalities.
Takeaway: Refined entry points, hierarchy, and logging process for smoother usability.
Orb Day
Users found the orb data confusing and the purpose of visual elements unclear. Some users were unsure whether they were supposed to feel a particular emotion (e.g., “fear”) when viewing the orb data.
Takeaway: Clarified data visualization and aligned prompts with user expectations.
INSIGHTS
Key Learnings from Usability Testing
Confusing hierarchy made it hard for users to know where to start.
Personal and emotional elements made the app feel more meaningful.
Orb colors on the calendar were too subtle to easily show emotion.
The purple background felt unsettling due to mood-color associations.
Work In Progress
If you would like to learn more about Orb please contact me! Anticipated project completion date August 25, 2025.