A Sensory Moodboarding App

Fuse

COMPANY

Interactive Design

ROLE

UX Designer

EXPERTISE

UX/UI Design

YEAR

2025

Overview

For this semester-long interactive design project, I designed Fuse, a mobile app that reimagines how people set moods and gather inspiration by combining visual mood boarding (like Pinterest) with sensory customization (like a diffuser). The concept emerged from user research around emotional regulation, aesthetic exploration, and multi-sensory experiences in digital spaces.

Fuse allows users to curate a vibe using images, sounds, and scents; then syncs that vibe to their environment through Spotify and smart diffuser integration. The goal was to make inspiration feel immersive and tangible.

Timeline

January 2025 - April 2025

Research

To deeply understand how users engage with mood and environment creation, I conducted semi-structured interviews with students who frequently use Pinterest, music, and diffusers for emotional regulation and creative ambiance.

Bright Points ✅

Mood boards Are Personal

Users deeply associate curated images with emotion and motivation.

Scent + Sound = Powerful Memory Cues

Many used music or diffusers already, but never combined them intentionally.

Desire for Control

Users liked the idea of tweaking a vibe rather than being told what mood to feel.

Pain Points ❌

Pinterest is Passive

Inspiration often stays digital and doesn’t translate to real-world action.

Diffuser Apps Are Clunky

Most diffuser interfaces are either purely functional or outdated.

No Sensory Integration

No current platform offered a way to unify image, scent, and sound into one experience.

HMW

How might we design a moodboarding platform that uses multi-sensory ambiance to help users intentionally shape environments 🧘🏻‍♀️🕯️🖼️

Persona

Name: Jamie (23, Master's Student)

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

"I want my space to reflect how I feel and how I want to feel. The right environment is everything!

Name: Jamie (23, Master's Student)

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

"I want my space to reflect how I feel and how I want to feel. The right environment is everything!

Name: Jamie (23, Master's Student)

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

"I want my space to reflect how I feel and how I want to feel. The right environment is everything!

Behavioral Considerations

Loves personalization but doesn’t want to start from scratch every time
Inspired by Pinterest and Spotify where discovery feels effortless
Enjoys routines but likes having room for spontaneity
Drawn to aesthetics, but function matters just as much, if not more
Uses scent and music to support emotional regulation and productivity

Frustrations

Inability to preview/visualize an experience before trying it
Too many apps to set a vibe (ex. Spotify for music, changing her LED lights with another app)

Goals

Seamlessly blend her mood, music, and scent for different moments (e.g., study, self-care, socializing)
Discover curated “vibe recipes” that match how she feels or wants to feel
Feel seen by the app like it understands her without having to constantly explain herself

Ideation

Our ideation process was deeply informed by patterns from user interviews, as well as reflective interpretation. We broke the process into multiple phases to translate raw insight into structured interfaces.

Interpret

To ground our ideation, we synthesized user patterns into an interpret matrix that explored key contrasts such as mood vs. function and active vs. passive engagement. This helped define behavioral spectrums and where Fuse could intervene.

Hunches

Emotion-driven presets help users act on mood, not micromanage settings
→ Fuse should offer intentional default boards (e.g., “Stillness”, “Flow”) instead of building everything manually.
Time of day shapes emotional needs
→ Fuse should anticipate and adapt moods for different contexts: mornings vs. nights, energized vs. restful.
Multisensory cues (especially scent + light) support calm, focus, and emotional safety
→ Fuse needs to prioritize those sensory layers above less-relevant features like sound, depending on the user.

Emotion-driven presets help users act on mood, not micromanage settings
→ Fuse should offer intentional default boards (e.g., “Stillness”, “Flow”) instead of building everything manually.
Time of day shapes emotional needs
→ Fuse should anticipate and adapt moods for different contexts: mornings vs. nights, energized vs. restful.
Multisensory cues (especially scent + light) support calm, focus, and emotional safety
→ Fuse needs to prioritize those sensory layers above less-relevant features like sound, depending on the user.

Emotion-driven presets help users act on mood, not micromanage settings
→ Fuse should offer intentional default boards (e.g., “Stillness”, “Flow”) instead of building everything manually.
Time of day shapes emotional needs
→ Fuse should anticipate and adapt moods for different contexts: mornings vs. nights, energized vs. restful.
Multisensory cues (especially scent + light) support calm, focus, and emotional safety
→ Fuse needs to prioritize those sensory layers above less-relevant features like sound, depending on the user.

Storyboarding

We translated user insights into narrative sketches that captured emotional flow during use. These hunches drove core feature concepts:

Site Map

Paper Wireframes

Wireframes

Usability Testing

We ran informal usability tests with 3 users from our research pool, focused on:

Board creation flow:

Preset Selection:

Emotional Clarity:

Could users complete a board using only 3 inputs?

Did presets feel too prescriptive or freeing?

Did visuals + labels feel like mood cues?

Key Findings

Users preferred icon-based scent and color inputs over long sliders

Preset boards were more popular when labeled with moods (e.g. "Stillness") instead of generic names
One tester said: *"I liked that I didn’t have to think, it felt like the app already knew the vibe I wanted."

Heuristic Insights

Design System

Fuse’s system emphasizes calm utility and sensory softness, every decision grounded in reducing overwhelm and encouraging exploration.

Typography

Poppins: A rounded sans-serif for clarity, friendliness, and emotional softness

Color Palette

Components

Card-based boards
Sticky nav for consistency
Sensory selectors with icon-labeled modals
Motion principles: soft transitions and fade-ins to mirror emotional regulation

Designs were lightly guided by Material Design’s hierarchy and spacing but adapted with custom emotional cues.

Final Prototype

Jamie’s scenario came to life through our Figma prototype:

High Fidelity Wireframes

Final Prototypes

To embed a Youtube video, add the URL to the properties panel.

Reflection

Designing Fuse taught me the power of multi-sensory restraint, knowing when to offer choice and when to guide. The most emotionally intelligent tools are often the simplest.

Next Steps

If iterating further, I would: