AI Design Lab
Prototypes to test ideas I've been turning over for years, using Human Agency Design to explore where emerging technology can give people more clarity and choice.
Self Care
A lock-screen self-care snack bar for quick mood check-ins. Name how you feel, note the small daily factors around you, and log a tiny check-in without opening a full app.
The problem
Self-care is consistently the first commitment people deprioritize, not from lack of intent, but because of decision fatigue: the well-documented depletion of willpower and judgment that accumulates across a day of choices. By evening, the mental resources needed to choose a healthy meal, go for a walk, or simply rest are the same resources already spent all day on everyone else's needs. The result is a predictable, almost mechanical pattern of self-neglect, not a personal failing, but a resource-allocation problem.
Self Care addresses this by lowering the decision cost of caring for yourself: small, well-timed nudges and low-friction choices offered at the moments willpower is already thin, rather than demanding fresh discipline on top of an already-depleted reserve. Less self-negotiation, less guilt, more room for care to actually happen.
Sources: Baumeister, R. F. et al. (1998), "Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Vohs, K. D. et al. (2005), "Decision Fatigue Exhausts Self-Regulatory Resources"; Tierney, J. (2011), "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?", The New York Times Magazine.
Meeting Coach
A live lock-screen meeting coach that scrolls the conversation, tracks predetermined talking points and expertise, scores communication clarity, and separately signals whether the room is going well, mixed, or poorly.
The problem
Knowledge workers spend an average of 18-23 hours a week in meetings, yet studies on "meeting recovery syndrome" show that poorly run meetings leave a residue of fatigue and unresolved tension that follows people into their next task. The core issue isn't meeting quantity, it's the absence of structure around preparation, real-time facilitation, and follow-through. Without a clear thread connecting what was decided, who owns what, and what changed as a result, meetings become isolated events rather than links in a chain of progress. This creates a quiet but corrosive form of organizational memory loss: decisions get re-litigated, action items evaporate, and people leave meetings uncertain whether their time was well spent.
Meeting Coach reduces this by acting as a steady hand across the full meeting lifecycle, helping people walk in prepared, stay oriented to purpose while they're in it, and leave with clarity on what happens next. Less re-explaining, less redundant discussion, more confidence that each meeting actually moved something forward.
Sources: Allen, J. A., Mroz, J. et al., University of Nebraska Omaha, research on meeting recovery syndrome; "Why am I so exhausted?: Exploring Meeting-to-Work Transition Time and Recovery from Virtual Meeting Fatigue," PMC/National Institutes of Health.
Contact
A people-first contact hub that brings conversations across channels into one prioritized view, surfaces who is waiting on you, and helps you prepare for the people in your next meeting.
The problem
The average knowledge worker checks 6-10 communication apps daily, Messages, Mail, Slack, WhatsApp, Teams, Phone, each with its own inbox, notification style, and mental model. Every app-switch carries a hidden tax: cognitive psychologists call it task-switching cost, the residual attention left behind each time your brain re-orients to a new context. Multiply that across dozens of daily switches, and the result isn't just lost time, it's cumulative cognitive load, the working-memory strain of holding open threads across fragmented systems.
The deeper issue is that these tools organize around channels (which app) and objectives (which meeting, which task), not around the people we're actually accountable to. So we lose the thread on who's waiting, who matters most today, and what they actually need, buried under a pile of undifferentiated notifications.
Contact reduces this load by collapsing every channel into one relationship-centered layer, prioritizing people over platforms, so your attention goes to who needs you, not which app pinged you. Less switching, less noise, more presence with the people who matter.
Sources: Leroy, S. (2009), "Why is it so hard to do my work?", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, origin of "attention residue"; Mark, G. et al., UC Irvine research on interruption recovery time; American Psychological Association, research on multitasking and switch costs.
Partner
A consent-first proximity sharing concept that lets two people choose specific Apple system data, approve the connection on both watches, and pause or stop the sync at any time.
The problem
Sharing personal information with someone close should feel simple, intentional, and mutual. Instead, people must choose between fragmented one-at-a-time sending and broad permissions that are hard to understand, easy to forget, and unclear once the moment has passed.
Communication Privacy Management theory describes shared personal information as co-owned, requiring ongoing rules between both people. Most tools treat consent as a one-time grant, creating “boundary turbulence” when access no longer matches expectations. Repeated, low-clarity privacy prompts can also cause privacy fatigue, leading people to accept defaults rather than make meaningful choices.
Partner turns sharing into a temporary, visible agreement. Both people bring their devices together, choose specific Apple system data, and approve the connection on their watches. A live status plus pause and stop controls make consent coordinated, revisitable, and mutual, reducing ambiguity and forgotten permissions.
Sources:
Petronio, S. (1991). “Communication Boundary Management: A Theoretical Model of Managing Disclosure of Private Information Between Marital Couples.” Communication Theory, 1(4), 311–335.
Petronio, S. (2002). Boundaries of Privacy: Dialectics of Disclosure. SUNY Press.
Choi, H., Park, J., & Jung, Y. (2018). “The Role of Privacy Fatigue in Online Privacy Behavior.” Computers in Human Behavior, 81, 42–51.