AYAN

AYAN was developed around sickle cell crises: acute episodes where timing matters and delayed pain management can make an already difficult episode harder to manage. The project began with primary research with people living with sickle cell disease. One participant expressed the problem particularly clearly:

“If I had taken the pain relief earlier, I would be in less pain now.”

That observation shifted the design problem away from pain relief alone and towards recognising and responding earlier.

As a team of five, we developed the concept for a wearable patch intended to monitor biosignals associated with an approaching crisis and support timely transdermal pain-relief delivery. Once the research and ideation had been done as a team, my contribution focused on the companion-app interface in Figma and the colour, material and finish direction for the wearable itself.

A medical wearable can communicate illness every time it is visible. We explored skin-tone palettes and softer, more everyday forms so the device could sit on the body with less of the visual language of conventional medical equipment. That same principle carried into the companion experience: health information has to be available without making the user feel as though their condition has become the interface's entire identity.

AYAN is concept work rather than a clinically validated device, what it demonstrates is a design shift I care about: starting with lived experience, then allowing that evidence to change both the functional proposition and the physical expression of the product.

The technology is only useful if the person who has to wear it can actually imagine doing so.