MJ

Nexo

Problem

Overview

Process

Insights

Product

How it Work

SPECULATIVE CONCEPT

2026 · Case 03/04

MJ

Nexo

Problem

Overview

Process

Insights

Product

SPECULATIVE CONCEPT

2026 · Case 03/04

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Wearable · Mobile App · Speculative

Sensing the invisible  ·  2026

Wearable + App

Speculative UX

Emotion Sensing

Config 2026

Wearable · Mobile App · Speculative

Sensing the invisible  ·  2026

Wearable + App

Speculative UX

Emotion Sensing

Figma Build 2026 hackathon

Speculative product · Interaction design

Speculative product · Interaction design

A wearable and app that read the emotional atmosphere of a room — and hand you back the one thing you were missing: why it felt that way.

A wearable and app that read the emotional atmosphere of a room — and hand you back the one thing you were missing: why it felt that way.

A wearable and app that read the emotional atmosphere of a room — and hand you back the one thing you were missing: why it felt that way.

A conceptual project built in 48 hours for the Figma Build 2026 hackathon, imagining a near-future sense for reading social environments. On a team of four, I led the app architecture and core screens — Live Scene, Calibration, and Memory — and built the design system.

A conceptual project built in 48 hours for the Figma Build 2026 hackathon, imagining a near-future sense for reading social environments. On a team of four, I led the app architecture and core screens — Live Scene, Calibration, and Memory — and built the design system.

A conceptual project built in 48 hours for the Figma Build 2026 hackathon, imagining a near-future sense for reading social environments. On a team of four, I led the app architecture and core screens — Live Scene, Calibration, and Memory — and built the design system.

[Tool]

Figma, Figma Make, UX/UI, Brand

[My Role]

Design lead — app, core screens, system

[Partners]

Li · Ning · Liu · Mj

[Time line]

72 hours ·

Figma Build 2026 hackathon

Problem Statement

You feel it. But you can't explain it.

You feel it. But you can't explain it.

We constantly read emotional signals from the people around us — but it happens below conscious awareness. You feel a room shift and never learn why. Three failures compound from there.

We constantly read emotional signals from the people around us — but it happens below conscious awareness. You feel a room shift and never learn why. Three failures compound from there.

01

Feeling without cause

Feeling without cause

You sense a space is tense or off, but can't point to what changed — the signal arrives with no explanation attached.

You sense a space is tense or off, but can't point to what changed — the signal arrives with no explanation attached.

02

Self-blame in the gap

Self-blame in the gap

Unable to locate the cause outside themselves, people assume it's them — then withdraw, and feel guilty for leaving.

Unable to locate the cause outside themselves, people assume it's them — then withdraw, and feel guilty for leaving.

03

Quietly exhausting

Quietly exhausting

For socially anxious or neuro -divergent people, a constant stream of unexplained signals drains a whole evening's energy.

For socially anxious or neuro -divergent people, a constant stream of unexplained signals drains a whole evening's energy.

The Solution

The Solution

Make the invisible perceivable.

Make the invisible perceivable.

NExO detects the airborne chemistry of emotion and turns it into something you can perceive — a gentle signal in the moment, and a legible record over time. It doesn't tell you to calm down. It confirms what your body already sensed: you're not imagining it — this space really is tense right now.

Device Introduction

Device Introduction

The Process

The Process

We grounded the project in one person: Mika Lin, 28, a landscape architect with ADHD. Across a charged transit hub, a café that felt wrong from the doorway, a market run she abandoned halfway — the pattern never changed. The problem was never the feeling. It was the missing explanation.

Persona

Persona

HOW IT WORKS (Idea)

A new sensory channel, where smell already lives.

A new sensory channel, where smell already lives.

Your body already detects the emotional chemistry of people nearby. NExO surfaces it in three moves — then hands it to a sense you can consciously read.

01

Detect

A micro e-Nose captures the volatile compounds bodies release under stress, fear, and joy.

02

Analyze

An on-device model reads emotional signatures from the molecular combinations.

03

Translate

Signals become gentle scent rhythms on the nose — legible without a screen.

1

Sense

Nose clip reads two streams — your skin, and the air around you.

Nose clip reads two streams your skin, and the air around you.

→

→

2

Interpret

On-device model reads the emotional sign-ature, privately.

On-device

model reads the emotional signature, privately.

On-device model reads the emotional sign-ature, privately.

→

→

3

Feed back

Scent to feel the room now; app to

see & reflect.

Scent to feel the room now; app to

see & reflect.

Scent to feel the room now; app to see & reflect.

→

→

4

You adjust

You notice, move, breathe — it keeps learning your patterns.

You notice, move, breathe — it keeps learning your patterns.

↺ back to 1 — each pass makes the next one sharper. Continuous awareness, not a one-way readout.

HOW IT WORKS (product)

01 / 04

LIVE SCENE · HOME

Read the room in real time.

The home screen leads with the atmosphere itself — the crowd rendered in emotion color — and puts numbers second. The decisive call: separating the room's stress from your own.

ROOM · SOCIAL

9

YOU · SELF

27

02 / 04

CALIBRATION · TRUST

The device learns you.

An emotion sensor that doesn't know you is just a mood ring. Calibration is an ongoing loop — Measure, Explore, Confirm, Improve — where your feedback visibly shapes the model. Trust is the product.

An emotion sensor that doesn't know you is just a mood ring. Calibration is an ongoing loop — Measure, Explore, Confirm, Improve — where your feedback visibly shapes the model. Trust is the product.

SCREEN DATA (93% · 217 DAYS) IS ILLUSTRATIVE OF A MATURE USAGE STATE.

03 / 04

MEMORY · PATTERNS

Moments become a map.

One reading tells you about now; Memory tells you about your life. A daily timeline logs each place with its detected mood, and the monthly view rolls it into an emotion breakdown and top locations.

04 / 04

SETTINGS · CONTROL

Privacy, in plain reach.

On-device storage by default. Location tracking as a visible toggle. Delete-all-data in the main list — not buried three menus deep. In a 48-hour sprint the quiet screens get skipped first; we made them load-bearing.

IN THE POCKET

Quiet enough to live with.

NExO sits among the apps you already use — no dashboard to babysit, no notifications begging for attention. It waits until you want to look.

DESIGN SYSTEM

Color as a language, not decoration.

Color as a language, not decoration.

The interface stays monochrome and precise, set in Recursive. Color enters in exactly one place — the emotion taxonomy — so a hue always carries meaning.

Calm

Pleasant · low

Joy

Pleasant · high

Anxious

Unpleasant · rising

Angry

Unpleasant · hot

WHAT I LEARNED

The visualization was the easy part.

Trust first

Designing a new sense means designing trust before anything else. The calibration loop, the confirmations, the accuracy stat — all of it is trust infrastructure. The pretty part comes after.

Validation is a feature

Our biggest insight wasn't technical. The need wasn't ‘reduce my stress’ — it was ‘confirm my perception.’ Reframing from regulation to confirmation is what made the architecture click.

Alerts shouldn't cause stress

Alerts shouldn't

cause stress

A tool that flags tension can't add to it. Every notification was tuned to inform without intruding — the calmest possible way to say ‘the room just shifted.’

IF WE HAD ANOTHER WEEK

The honest gaps.

01

Prototype the scent vocabulary itself. What an ‘anxious room’ feels like as a rhythm on the nose is still notional — and that's the actual new sense.

02

Test the bystander question. We protected the wearer's privacy. How people feel about being sensed is the harder problem, barely started.

03

Stress-test the taxonomy. Four emotions was right for 48 hours. Real rooms are messier than calm, joy, anxious, angry.

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