Cens:ai Mobile App Design

Cens:ai (pronounced “sen-say”) is the flagship product for Evolve Biologix. It’s an iOS app that works in conjunction with a wearable heart rate sensor to measure heart coherence and stress levels. The purpose is to help users understand how external factors affect their emotions, stresses and mental performance.

My Role

As Head of Design, I led a strategic UX overhaul, reimagining the app from a simple HRV monitor into a guided experience that empowers users to turn biometric insights into intentional daily actions. I also planned and executed a friends-and-family beta to validate the experience ahead of the App Store launch in early 2025.

Objective

Design and build the flagship product for the company.

The app was built around two core objectives: to enter the emotional wellness space through wearables and to serve as the foundation for emotion detection research. Our design strategy not only focused on delivering immediate user value through self-regulation tools but also on capturing high-quality biometric and emotional data to inform long-term AI development. This positioned the app as both a consumer wellness product and a research-grade data collection tool, laying the groundwork for a deeply personalized, AI-powered future experience.

Product Overview

How it Works

Heart patterns shift in response to both internal and external factors like stress, focus, and emotional state. I designed an experience around a biometric sensor that measures those shifts in real time, giving users immediate feedback on how their emotions are affecting them. From there, the app interprets the data into clear, actionable insights—offering guidance, surface-level trends, and progress tracking to help users build emotional awareness and resilience over time.

Quantitative and Qualitative Data combined into a single set

Cens:ai works with a heart rate sensor to measure HRV and use it to calculate Heart Coherence as well as arousal (stresses). The users metrics are calculated second-to-second to allow for real-time metrics at all times.

Quantitative Metrics

Evolve Power Index (EPI)

EPI is a metric that measures your heart coherence. A higher score means more emotional alignment and heart coherence.

Stress Intensity (SI)

SI is a measurement of where you are on the Arousal axis of the Valence/Arousal model. A higher score means more nervous system activation—either from stress or stimulation.

Qualitative Metrics

Emotions

The user in encouraged to add their emotions to their activities. The more emotions they add, the faster the emotion detection research can advance.

Other External Factors

Factors that cannot be automatically detected, such as who they are with, what they are doing, or what they are thinking about are added by the user.

Automated Factors

Users can integrate their calendar to automatically tag events from their day. Geolocation tags where the user is whenever they are tagging an event.

App Performance Goals

Along with the 2 main business objectives, I had 3 goals in mind to consider the app a success.

Keep users engaged daily

There needed to be more to this app than just meditations. Something else to help the users answer, "why am I using this app?"

Enable user to grow

Give users the realtime feedback they need to recognize how their emotions were affecting them, the tools they need to respond to that feedback, and the knowledge understand why it works.

Build a community

With a main focus of the product being human connection, there needed to be some element that connected the users creating more accountability as well as serving as support for each user.

Goal 1: Keep Users Engaged Daily

Check-ins and setting a daily intention

Rough wireframes

The initial requirements were exclusively an emotion check-in and perceived causes of those emotions. The user would input how they were feeling and add tags.

Not sticky enough

I did not think this would be sticky enough, so I added the daily intention. Having a daily intention practice has been scientifically proven to increase clarity and focus as well as boost mindfulness and productivity. I also wanted to be able to show the user how their day-to-day aspects correlated with heart rhythms, so I broke down the check-in into 4 questions instead of just one. The factors I chose were sleep, focus, stress, and general outlook on the day.

Final Designs

There final designs are a simple 5 step check-in that takes about 30 seconds to complete. Users are asked how rested they are feeling, how focused they are feeling, how negatively stressed they are, and what their outlook is on their day. They are also encouraged to add what factors are affecting those emotions. Lastly, they are asked to set a daily intention.

Headline and summary

The user is given a headline and summary based on their responses.

Question summaries

Answers are displayed with a color bar to reinforce how well they are prepared for the day

Daily intention

The users intention is prominently displayed as a reminder of their focus for that day

Other factors

Each of the tags that factored in to their answers are shown below each answer

Understanding the metrics and seeing trends

In the insights section of the app, the user can see how their sleep, stress and focus are aligned with their metrics for each day. This helps the users understand how their emotions are affected by external factors and they can also start to see how their emotions affect their daily life.

Rest overlayed with average EPI

Daily focus overlayed with average EPI

Negative stress overlayed with SI

See it in action

Here is a recording of a prototype I built during this process.

A full day view

Seeing a daily average of your EPI and SI isn't enough to be able to learn what factors are affecting your day. The user needs to be able to see how specific moments in their day affect their emotions and mental performance.

Your EPI fluctuates quite a bit from a second-to-second basis so looking at a full day of metrics is pretty useless. But when you change the sample to averages over a 15 minute span, you can see some very interesting peaks and valleys. When you are able to see specifically what moments raised or lowered your EPI or SI, you can quickly learn how to adapt to them.  A daily journal with these interesting moments highlighted was the perfect way to start connecting those dots for the user.

See your full day at a glance

A simplified version of the users metrics throughout the day allows them to see peaks and valleys more easily

Activities and autotags are highlighted

The user can see easily see their moments of interest from their day by highlighted sections of their chart and each moment is labeled with a corresponding icon.

Add missing details

If the user has an above or below average EPI of SI for an extended period, the app automatically makes a recording. The user is then able to add details to that moment if they choose. They can add details like their emotions, who they were with, and what they were doing.

Get the full story

A long press on any of the activities or moments listed in the bottom section will pull up a summary of that activity.

Check-ins and a daily journal keep the user coming back for more

By adding a daily intention to the morning and evening check-ins, users gained an extra level of focus to their day. By showing them how aspects like sleep directly affect their emotions, users are motivated to improve those aspects and get actionable feedback to make those improvements. Increased daily focus and motivation kept users much more engaged on a daily basis. Seeing your full day at a glance helps you make changes to your daily life quickly.

Goal 2: Enable users to Grow

Meditations and group syncs

Basic Individual Meditation Flow

The initial requirements were exclusively an emotion check-in and perceived causes of those emotions. The user would input how they were feeling and add tags.

A heart coherence meditation is a specific style of meditation

Heart coherence refers to a state where your heart, mind, and emotions are in sync. It’s not just a feel-good concept—it’s a scientifically measurable state in which your heart rate variability (HRV) becomes smooth and harmonious, reflecting inner balance and calm.

To achieve this inner balance, your breathing needs to be slow and consistent, which meant getting the breath queues right was paramount. More importantly, each users perfect range is unique so the user needed to be able to adjust the pacing as needed.

Layout is meant to support a soft focus

Having a soft focus is very important to getting into coherence, so I wanted to make sure the user could see all of their metrics without having to look all over the screen.

EPI and SI Chart

Some users became extra motivated from seeing their EPI skyrocket, so I made the chart extra large to support this.

Screen is fully customizable

Users are able to hide any or all elements from the screen if they feel they are a distraction.

Guided by sounds

If the user prefers to keep their eyes closed, they can enable audio queues for their inhale, exhale and reaching new peaks in their EPI. Each theme has it's own set of audio queues.

Meditation Themes

Cens:ai comes with 4 different themes designed specifically for getting your heart into coherence. Each theme comes with soothing ambient sounds, audio cues for inhaling and exhaling to keep you on pace with your breathing and a visual breath pacer.

A desert theme

A campfire theme

A rain theme

Group meditations from anywhere

The science of large numbers of people meditating at the same time creating real world change is well documented. Look further than the Lebanon Peace Project. We wanted to create a way for users to meditate at the same time no matter where they were, so we created group syncs. For Phase 1, we just wanted to be able to show the each users real-time EPI in the same UI.

Keep it simple

The potential for massive group meditation sessions is endless, but for this first iteration, I wanted to make sure we could get the most basic aspect done correctly before expanding the experience.

I wanted to make sure the mediation experience was unchanged as possible so the user could maintain focus on their own breath work, but I also wanted to make sure the gained all of the benefits of the group session, including being motivated by the group numbers along with their own.

I designed an overlay that appears in the same location as their own metrics, and was also collapsable if desired. I did not include each users EPI lines in the chart because it became so overwhelming visually that sessions were rarely as effective as solo sessions.

At the end of the session, along with their usual meditation metrics, the user can see the average EPI and peak EPI of each participant as well as the summary of the group as a whole.

The power of heart coherence in the palm of your hand

By teaching users how to get into coherence, they become enabled to change their mindset whenever they need. The customized themes allow them to mediate however they choose, and the ability to save their settings as a preset session makes it easy to jump right in with 1 tap. Adding the ability to meditate with a group makes the feature even more powerful.

Goal 3: Build a community

Community and User Profiles

Initial Community Section

The initial requirements for the community section were just a basic friends list. Before I arrived, there was no real "community." You could add friends and see who your friends were, but that was it.

A product that is focused on building connections between people should do more

Instead of just having a list of friends, I designed the fee to share how friends are doing, not just from a posts perspective, but from an emotional metrics standpoint. By default, most user activity is added to the feed which is only visible to users they have friended. Users can see when their friends are having a tough morning, or a new super successful meditation, or perhaps hit a new streak of days "in the green." And of course, users can easily elect not to share their activity at any time.

The intent behind this digital authenticity was to create a space for users to be vulnerable which in turn creates deeper connections with others.

Activity Feed

This iteration of the activity feed is just the beginning. Several more interactive features are planned to be added such as commenting, challenges, groups and more. This is also where all live interactions with thought leaders will occur. An example being, a leading meditation teacher is hosting a life group meditation, join right now.

User Profile

This is just the first iteration of the user profile. If you are friends with a user, are able to see their activity as well as have the option to invite them to a group sync. If you are not friends, you are able to see their friends and you have the option to add them as a friend.

Post Types

Cens:ai comes with 4 different themes designed specifically for getting your heart into coherence. Each theme comes with soothing ambient sounds, audio cues for inhaling and exhaling to keep you on pace with your breathing and a visual breath pacer.

Morning and evening check-ins

Meditations and other activity recordings

General emotion check-ins and posts

See it in action

Here is a recording of a prototype I built to preview the activity feed in both dark mode and light mode.

Conclusion

Cens:ai helps users become better versions of themselves while also moving emotion detection research forward. The daily check-ins and meditations keep users engaged on a daily basis. Automated (calendar integrations) and user initiated activity recordings help users see how different interactions affect their emotions and the insights explains those connections, while also collecting user data to be used in resarch. Cens:ai should be available in the Apple App Store this summer.