Field Notes

Design lives in the details
you notice every day.

Observations from physical spaces, digital products, and the overlap between them. Not case studies — a designer paying attention.

✦ Chaska Life Experience design beyond the screen
January 2025

Yoga & Brunch — designing a morning that
feels like a fresh start

Eight people, a winter backyard, and a brief that said: nourishing for the soul and the body. Every decision — the outdoor rugs, the space heaters, the immunity shots before yoga, the pre-event survey about dietary needs and experience levels — was a design constraint answered with intention. Co-designed the yoga flow with a fellow UX designer who teaches yoga, so the session arc was as considered as the table.

The full yoga brunch table — lily stems in dark bottles, Buddha figure as visual anchor, woven textures throughout
The full table before guests arrived — lily stems in dark bottles, Buddha as visual anchor, woven texture running wall to wall.
Buddha figure in foreground, two-tier muffin stand behind — the visual center of the table composition
A $12 Buddha figure anchoring the visual center of a composed table — hierarchy without hierarchy.
Hand pouring chai from a printed teapot into a brass cup in morning sunlight
The chai moment — brewed fresh after yoga, poured in sunlight. A ritual, not just a drink.
Design observation

I'd design the menu differently next time: fewer options, more presence. Complexity at transition points costs you the moment.

Experience design Service design The Chaska Life
◎ Product Observations Noticing what digital products get right — and what they miss
July 2024

When clarity isn't enough —
the case for inherited care in health tech

At a health tech hackathon, one concept stopped me: upload your blood work, receive insights back in a warm, conversational tone — less clinical report, more caring relative explaining what it means and what you might do about it.

It resonated immediately because it's something I already have. My dad is a doctor. Whenever I receive blood work — anxious or not — I share it with him. What follows isn't a reading of numbers. It's a conversation: what's good, what needs attention, what to add to my diet. The information comes wrapped in care.

That made me wonder whether the real design problem here is about clarity — making medical data more readable — or about something harder: replicating the feeling of being genuinely cared for.

I don't think a chatbot can fully replace that warmth. But I found myself thinking further. What if the question isn't "can AI replicate my dad" but "what if my dad could teach the model how he thinks?" Not just the information — the tone, the priorities, the way he decides what matters. A knowledge transfer, the way recipes passed from grandmothers to mothers to us. Except now it could happen with medical context, with a life philosophy, with anything a person wants to leave behind or pass forward.

For people who have that person: a way to hold onto something precious. For people who don't: access to something they never had — the collective wisdom of thoughtful caregivers, delivered like it came from someone who knows you.

Design provocation

The real design problem isn't clarity. It's inheritance. What if the people who care for us could teach the systems that outlast them?

Health tech Conversational UX AI & care Information design