Sylen

Background

Sylen explores the relationship between mood, focus, and rest in students' and working adults' routines. In our team's survey of 52 respondents, 76.9% reported skipping breaks while absorbed in work or study, while 65.4% said mood often affected their focus. These findings informed a design connecting emotional awareness with work and rest.

I worked as a UI/UX designer alongside a UX researcher and a UI designer. We aimed to connect awareness of emotional state with a manageable work rhythm, rather than treating productivity and personal reflection as separate activities.

Process

We used survey findings, interviews, a persona, and journey mapping to define three connected parts of the experience: Mood Tracker, Focus Mode, and Reflection. The flows connect a mood check-in with a focus session, opportunities to pause, and a review of past entries.

We developed wireframes, interface components, and a prototype, then evaluated five tasks with five testers. The tasks covered registration, entering a mood, completing a reflection, using Focus Mode, and viewing mood history. This let us inspect how people moved through the core experience.

Outcome

The evaluation recorded a System Usability Scale score of 86/100. However, the reflection task had a 51.7% misclick rate despite full task completion, identifying an area to investigate in a future iteration. The findings concern prototype usability, not evidence that Sylen reduces burnout or improves mental health.

Sylen taught me to connect features into a coherent routine and look beyond a single summary score. A useful next step is understanding where reflection becomes confusing before deciding how to change it.