FOLDER 02 · OPENED
Anosity
Making an invisible system visible — one anxious pattern at a time.
01 · THE PATTERN
Anxiety looks like one thing. It isn’t.
A tight chest, a racing mind, a bad day — one word for a whole sky. The first move was to stop treating anxiety as a single feeling, and start seeing the system underneath it.
02 · THE TRANSLATION
From a feeling to a map you can read.
The neurobiology breaks anxiety into domains that run at once and feed each other. Judson Brewer’s work on curious awareness showed the move that changes it: you can’t fight a habit loop, but non-judgmental noticing can interrupt one.
“Curiosity and anxiety can’t fully occupy the mind at once.”
A VISUAL SPARK · LONDON
Making an invisible experience hard to ignore.
While living in London, I kept seeing The Anxious Generation: Est. 1995 displayed across the city. I had not read the book and did not use it as research; what stayed with me was the campaign’s repetition and blunt public presence. It made an often-private subject feel visible in shared space.
The influence was communication, not content: name the tension directly, then give people a gentler way in.
BEFORE THE WIREFRAMES · MAPPING THE PROBLEM
First I mapped the tangle, then I looked for the pattern.
The earliest work wasn’t screens. It was trying to see the whole system — where hidden anxiety lives across body, mind, and behavior, and where a gentler, noticing-based intervention could sit.
EARLY LO-FIS · FINDING THE ENTRY POINT
Before adding features, I tested how the experience should begin.
The first wireframes weren’t about visual polish. They tested how much context Anosity should provide, what users should control, and how the product could invite reflection without feeling like another assessment or performance dashboard.
01 / TRUST
Explain before asking.
Early onboarding introduced Anosity as a reflective guide before asking the user to track anything. The entry needed to establish purpose, expectations, and control before requesting personal input.
PURPOSE BEFORE DISCLOSURE
02 / AGENCY
Let the user choose what to notice.
The first flows explored a personalized starting point rather than one fixed assessment. Users could choose the areas they wanted to understand, so the experience felt relevant instead of like a verdict.
CHOICE OVER COMPLETENESS
03 / HIERARCHY
Design one calm next step.
The home studies tested how much to show at once. The direction sharpened as one primary check-in gained emphasis and trends, resources, and secondary tools moved into supporting roles.
ONE ACTION BEFORE MANY INSIGHTS
01 · ENTRY & ONBOARDING
02 · CHOOSING WHAT TO NOTICE
03 · FROM MANY MODULES TO ONE ACTION
Early versions treated several modules as equally important. The refined direction made the primary reflection action easier to find and moved the symptom list into a supporting role.
THE LO-FIS ESTABLISHED
The tone of the product was a structural decision before it became a visual one.
These explorations did not define the final interface. They defined the conditions it needed to protect: clarity, agency, and nonjudgmental reflection.
- CONTEXT BEFORE COLLECTION
- NEUTRAL LANGUAGE
- USER-SELECTED FOCUS
- ONE CLEAR NEXT STEP
03 · INSIDE THE APP
Here, the app tells the story.
No streaks. No red. No verdict. Just an open question, a set of domains to explore, and rings that grow as you notice — a portrait, drawn by the person living inside it.
04 · WHAT CHANGED
Anxiety stopped being a verdict, and became something to be curious about.
People stopped asking “how bad is it?” and started asking “what haven’t I looked at yet?” The goal was never to calm anyone down — it was to help them notice what was already there.
CASE STUDY NOTES
Built for a Design & Mental Health course at Northeastern (Spring 2025), grounded in Judson Brewer’s Unwinding Anxiety (2021) and anxiety-stigma research. The thesis: anxiety isn’t a single feeling but a system running across thoughts, physical sensations, behaviors, and emotions — and curious, non-judgmental noticing, not streaks or scores, is what interrupts the loop. Anosity maps it instead of grading it.