Attune
Product & Interaction Design
Industry Placement, mentored by Emanuele Recupero — Domus Academy
Anxiety isn't only in the mind. It's a body you've stopped trusting.
(The Research)
Beneath anxiety, depression, and disordered eating sits a shared fault: a broken connection to the body's own signals — heartbeat, breath, hunger. The capacity is called interoception, and when it fails, the body sends noise instead of news. Clinicians already treat it through graded exposure. But that work lives in one hour a week, inside the clinic.
(The Response)
Attune is a wearable pendant that carries the therapy out the door. It makes an internal signal perceivable through haptics, helps the wearer find it unaided, then fades over four weeks as their own sense grows stronger. A coach built to make itself unnecessary — trading in felt sensation, not numbers.
(The Interaction)
Two relationships, one signal. On the body, raw cardiac and respiratory data is processed and discarded at the edge, never uploaded. To the clinic, a weekly consented summary of felt progress lets a therapist program the next step remotely and open each session on real data instead of recall. Signal, never surveillance.
(My Role)
Sole designer across a mentored industry placement: customer and market analysis, positioning, UX and system architecture, healthcare access research across EMEA, form development, identity and packaging, and the final pitch. The device is designed to read as jewellery, not as a diagnosis.
