Context and Motivation

This project emerged from questioning why most digital wellness tools are built around Western ideas of productivity, efficiency, and optimization. With few widely recognized wellness technologies grounded in Ayurvedic philosophy, this project uses design as a way to imagine how culturally rooted practices might inform everyday digital experiences.

Speculative Framing

Rather than improving an existing wellness app, Ayura was approached as a speculative design exercise. The goal was to explore an alternative future—one where wellness technology is shaped by rhythm, ritual, and emotional balance instead of metrics and performance.

Framing Question

What might a digital wellness system look like if it were designed around Ayurvedic principles of rhythm and balance rather than Western models of productivity and efficiency

Why Speculative Design?

Ayura was approached through speculative design because there are few widely recognized wellness technologies built primarily around Ayurvedic philosophy. A traditional UX approach—focused on iterating existing patterns—would have reinforced Western frameworks of productivity, efficiency, and on-demand care. Speculative design allowed this project to question those underlying assumptions and imagine an alternative system shaped by cultural ritual, rhythm, and long-term balance.

Rather than validating a market-ready solution, this project uses speculation as a critical tool: to explore how digital wellness might change when designed from non-Western value systems, and to surface questions about cultural ownership, AI authority, and what it means to care for wellbeing through technology.

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Research Goals

Although Rta is a speculative project, it was important to ground the concept in real experiences. The goal of this research was to understand how people currently experience wellness and burnout, where existing wellness tools fall short emotionally, and how users perceive culturally rooted practices and AI-supported guidance.

Methodology

I conducted semi-structured interviews to capture reflective, open-ended responses rather than measurable behaviors. This format allowed participants to describe their emotional relationship with wellness tools, their frustrations with productivity-driven systems, and their comfort levels with AI in personal contexts.

Participants

Participants were 5–7 individuals between the ages of 22–35, including both South Asian and non-South Asian users. The group represented a mix of frequent wellness-app users and those who had disengaged from such tools, providing a range of perspectives on trust, fatigue, and cultural relevance.

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Sensemaking Approach

Interview data was synthesized using affinity mapping to identify patterns across emotional experiences, cultural perceptions, and interactions with wellness technology. Rather than focusing on frequency or validation, this process emphasized interpretation—looking for shared tensions and unmet needs that emerged across different participants and backgrounds.

Key Insights

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Problem Statement

I framed challenges from user research as How Might We (HMW) questions to turn pain points into opportunities for design. By mapping insights to needs and crafting POV statements, I ensured each HMW remained grounded in real customer experiences rather than assumptions. The final HMW questions focused on sustaining emotional connection, simplifying care, and communicating sustainability.

Design Principles

I framed challenges from user research as How Might We (HMW) questions to turn pain points into opportunities for design. By mapping insights to needs and crafting POV statements, I ensured each HMW remained grounded in real customer experiences rather than assumptions. The final HMW questions focused on sustaining emotional connection, simplifying care, and communicating sustainability.

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Concept Direction

Ayura is conceived as a wellness operating system rather than a traditional app. Instead of organizing the experience around tasks, goals, or behaviors, the system is structured around rhythm, reflection, and contextual awareness. The core idea is not to “fix” the user, but to offer gentle guidance that adapts to emotional state, time of day, and seasonal context—mirroring Ayurvedic ways of understanding balance.

This speculative framing allowed the project to move beyond feature parity with existing wellness apps and instead ask how the structure of a digital system changes when its underlying values shift.

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Feature Breakdown

Features were intentionally scoped to support the core experience without introducing pressure, comparison, or optimization. Rather than building a comprehensive feature set, I prioritized depth in the moments that define the emotional tone of the system.

Core Experience (Designed):

• Reflective onboarding to establish intent and trust
• AI-guided rhythm quiz focused on interpretation, not classification
• A single, personalized home screen that adapts to daily rhythm
• A non-linear daily rhythm timeline that allows flexible entry

Supporting Features (Conceptual):

• Cultural and educational content on Ayurvedic rhythms
• Seasonal and contextual layers (time, cycle, environment)
• AI transparency and preference controls

By clearly separating what was designed from what remained conceptual, the project maintains focus while still demonstrating systems-level thinking.

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This section connects research insights directly to design decisions to show how findings shaped the system—not just the interface. Rather than treating research as a preliminary step, insights were used as ongoing constraints that guided what was built, what was simplified, and what was intentionally excluded.These mappings ensured that each design choice could be traced back to a specific research insight or value shift.

Insight-to-Decision Mapping

• Users felt pressure from metric-driven wellness tools
  → Removed streaks, scores, and progress indicators; avoided dashboards entirely.
• Flexibility increased trust and engagement
  → Designed a non-linear daily rhythm timeline that allows entry at any point.
• Cultural context built emotional resonance
  → Embedded acknowledgment of Ayurvedic origins within microcopy and education, rather than separating it into a marketing layer.
• AI was trusted when it felt reflective, not authoritative
  → Framed AI interactions as interpretive prompts with opt-outs, not prescriptions or goals.
• Over-notification caused disengagement
  → Prioritized pull-based interactions over push notifications.

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Core User Flow

The core experience was designed to feel intentional and non-demanding, focusing on how users enter and exit the system rather than how many actions they complete. Instead of a multi-tab structure, Ayura centers on a single, living home screen that adapts to the user’s rhythm over time.

Primary flow:
Onboarding → Reflective AI Quiz → Rhythm Interpretation → Personalized Home

This flow establishes trust first, interpretation second, and guidance last—mirroring the project’s emphasis on awareness over action.

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Key Screens

Only the most critical moments of the experience were designed in high fidelity to maintain focus and avoid overbuilding.

• Reflective onboarding: sets tone, intent, and ethical framing
• AI-guided rhythm quiz: gathers emotional and contextual input without labeling or scoring
• Personalized home screen: offers a single focal point for daily guidance
• Daily rhythm timeline (supporting screen): allows flexible engagement without penalties

Navigation and interaction patterns were kept minimal to reduce cognitive load and reinforce calm pacing.

Cultural Considerations

Because Ayurveda is a culturally rooted system of care, this project required careful consideration of how those practices are represented in a digital context. Rather than abstracting or rebranding Ayurvedic concepts, Ayura intentionally acknowledges their South Asian origins and frames them as part of a broader philosophy of balance and rhythm—not as interchangeable wellness techniques.

The design avoids presenting Ayurveda as a trend or productivity tool, resisting the common pattern of extracting cultural practices while removing their context. This approach treats cultural acknowledgment as a core system requirement rather than a layer of branding or content.

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Ethics around AI

AI in Ayura is deliberately limited in scope and authority. The system does not diagnose, prescribe, or correct users, and it avoids predictive or behavioral optimization models commonly used in wellness technology. Instead, AI is positioned as a reflective layer—interpreting inputs to offer context and prompts without enforcing action.

Transparency and user agency were prioritized through clear explanations of AI behavior and the ability to disengage without penalty. These decisions ensure that AI supports awareness rather than control, aligning with the project’s broader ethical stance.

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Final Outcome

Ayura results in a speculative, research-driven wellness concept that reframes how digital systems might support wellbeing when designed through Ayurvedic values rather than Western productivity models. The project demonstrates how AI, when intentionally constrained, can act as a reflective companion instead of an optimizing authority—supporting rhythm, balance, and cultural acknowledgment without introducing pressure or performance.

Rather than presenting a fully built product, Ayura offers a coherent system, clear values, and a core experience that illustrates how culturally grounded practices can meaningfully shape everyday technology.

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Reflection

This project pushed me to design with restraint—treating what I chose not to build as just as important as what I designed. Working through speculative design allowed me to question dominant assumptions around wellness, productivity, and AI, while my background in business analysis shaped how I scoped features, defined constraints, and traced decisions back to research.

Ayura represents a shift in how I approach UX design: moving beyond usability and optimization toward cultural responsibility, ethical systems thinking, and emotional nuance. It reinforced my interest in designing technology that not only works, but reflects the values and contexts of the people it serves.

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