Arnav Sharma's Portfolio

Soma: An AI enabled embodied stress management system

Made for

Pratt Institute, this was a project I worked on for one my classes during my masters degree. This paper was included in the ACM-TEI 2026 conference proceedings.

Made in

2 months in Fall 2025

Responsibilities

Conducted user research, worked on physical and digital prototyping. Worked with Figma Make to create prototypes.

BACKGROUND

Over 75% people feel physical or emotional symptoms of stress, but existing tools treat managing it as an optimization task.

Mental wellbeing apps

provide unpersonalized approaches for stress management.

Wearable Biofeedback

makes metric optimization a task in itelsef.

Physical objects

lack feedback on how to improve state of mental wellbeing.

So,

How can we help people manage stress in a way that matches the unique rhythms of their body?

INTRODUCING

Soma, a connected wellness ecosystem that helps people grow through their stress.

When stress hits, squeeze the SomaSeed for relief.

At the end of the day, reflect on your moments of stress and Soma will generate a digital flower based on how you coped.

See your garden bloom with flowers that show your patterns of coping.

The Soma app suggests micro-breaks based on your preferences and the current situation.

RESEARCH & IDEATION

Speaking to 7 people, we found stress management is a personal and intuition-based process.

This helped narrow down on 3 key design insights:

Design insight #1

Surface activities that feel natural and low effort in the moment.

Design insight #2

Combine small tangible interactions with digital tools.

Design insight #3

Build rituals that don’t feel intrusive.

Based on these insights, we thought a user journey that allows the user to manage moments of stress and learn from them.

Day goes on

Moment of stress

Stress hits

Day starts

Simple instant relief

Introduce a physical object

Build a daily ritual for wellbeing.

Surface simple intuitive activities.

😰

Micro-break, if very overwhelmed

Release stress from the day

Feel lighter and better prepared to handle stress

☀️

😮‍💨

😄

DESIGNING THE PHYSICAL OBJECT

The idea to include an emotionally simple physical interaction led to SomaSeed: a tactile squeezable object users can reach for when stress spikes.

Designed to understand your body’s signals of stress through sensors.

Breathing rate

Heart rate

Grip pressure

Galvanic skin response (sweat)

When squeezed, AI translates these signals into pulsating glows.

The seed guides you to physically release stress and breathe better.

CREATING THE APP

The Soma app provides suggestions to cope with moments of stress and identifies patterns without judgement.

PART 1: When stress arises during the day, and the user squeezes the SomaSeed

The app should surface only what’s needed: a short calming sequence and suggested actions to find peace in the moment of stress, while logging each squeeze to build patterns over time.

Adjust AI responses based on how you feel right now

While onboarding, users can connect other accounts for more personalized solutions

Control over how much intervention the user wants

User can switch through multiple suggestions to decide what suits them best in the moment.

AI guides users through breathing with the SomaSeed and matches it’s glow on the screen.

AI’s thought process shown to build trust and transparency

PART 2: At the end of the day, when the SomaSeed is returned to the terrarium

The app should nudges users to reflect on their day and think about how they coped with its stresses. This is aimed at creating a daily ritual of staying in touch with emotions and facing them head on rather than sweeping them under the rug.

Mixed-format (long form and quantitative) questions to improve understanding of the moment.

At the end of the day, the user “plants” their stress through their day’s flower of resilience.

Voice-based UI for more natural experience, like talking to a friend.

AI interprets the reflections and generates a unique digital flower that depicts how they managed stress that day.

The app logs each moment from the day along with interpreting the level of stress felt.

PART 3: Bringing all moments of coping together to uncover stronger patterns

To further build on the emotional language of the system, we introduced a garden view of all the moments you conquer day-to-day. Different flowers reflect different stress patterns in a way that feels intuitive rather than clinical.

The user can also view the full AI transcript of their journal from the day they have selected.

Soma summarizes that day and provides insight on how you coped.

We ensure transparency by calling out that the summary may not be fully accurate as it is AI generated.

The app logs each moment from the day along with interpreting the level of stress felt.