Arbor — Melody Fuentes

01 | Overview

A Home for the Past

Arbor is a mobile app designed to be a garden rich with your life experiences, acting as a prompt to intentionally and delightfully engage with your past.

Built as a three-person team, Arbor started from a broad idea,"Preserving the Past,” and evolved through interviews, prototyping, and three full fidelity cycles into a React Native app wrapped in hand-drawn pixel art.

Arbor was presented at Stanford’s Human-Computer Interaction Expo, a showcase with deep roots in the Silicon Valley and academic tech community attended by industry professionals, researchers, and founders.

Out of 40 teams, Arbor took home 4 awards (winning the most awards of any group!) :
Best Concept Video, Best Product Value, Most Novel Product, and Best Poster.

Role

Designer
Researcher

Timeline

10 weeks

Tools

Figma, Piskel, React Native, Firebase,
Google Suite

Skills

Needfinding
POVs + HMWs + Storyboards
UX/UI Research & Design
Prototyping & Development

02| TL;DR

The Challenge

Gap

Through need-finding, we found
people don't have an efficient, intentional way to recall past
positive memories

Goals

Make reflection frictionless
Cement positive memories
Delight!

The Solution

Arbor is a virtual garden where memories are ingrained in fruit.
The process of logging a memory and having game mechanics nudge intentional, periodic reminders of past positive memories are proven to help cement these moments in a user’s mind.

Plant a memory — Log a memory within a seed, saving it in a plot to grow over time.
Feed your character — When a fruit ripens, tap to “eat”- reviewing the memory and feeding your avatar
Share with friends — Mail fruit (memories) to friends through the in-game post office.