Designing a Human-Centered AI That Helps Users Understand Their Attention, Rather Than Control It
OVERVIEW.
Attention is usually addressed at the moment it is already lost.
Most focus tools step in when distraction becomes visible. They assume something external pulled attention away and respond by blocking, reminding, or correcting behavior. But attention often fades earlier than that. It softens under mental overload, emotional tension, or fatigue, long before anything obvious changes on screen.
In this project, I worked end-to-end as a product designer, from problem framing and user research to app design and system direction. The project takes a different approach, treating focus not as a behavior to control, but as an embodied process that naturally shifts over time.
Rather than enforcing productivity, this product is designed to support awareness and gentle reflection. Instead of reacting to distraction, it helps users notice how their attention changes and what their body may have been experiencing before focus slips, without judgment or pressure to perform.
Role: Product Designer
Year: 2025
Problem Statement.
Interviews and logs revealed a critical awareness action gap. Users often do not realize they are in mental overload until progress has already stalled. Existing tools, such as blockers and timers, fail because they require the very self-control and initiation that users have already exhausted. By operating on a deficit model, these tools rely on punitive designs that block or shame, triggering a cycle of digital anxiety and shame that leads to tool abandonment.