Quick When You Need It
Whether users have 10 seconds or just enough energy to tap once, Gutsy adjusts. Voice, widgets, and micro-interactions make logging feel effortless—even on tough days.
Gutsy
An AI-powered symptom tracker designed to reveal triggers and improve gut health.
Sample of some of Gutsy's screens
The Problem
Managing chronic digestive disorders is often frustrating, tedious, and discouraging. People dealing with IBS, Crohn’s, or gut-related inflammation are expected to manually log a wide range of daily variables — food, bowel movements, symptoms, sleep, hydration, stress — and do so consistently, sometimes multiple times a day.
Even with the effort, most health apps stop short: users are still left to interpret their own data, connect complex patterns, and figure out what’s actually triggering their symptoms. Sharing this information with doctors can also be overwhelming, disorganized, or incomplete.
Despite the growing number of tracking tools, no existing platform meaningfully reduces this cognitive and emotional burden or pulls all of these needs into one seamless, intelligent experience.
The Solution
Gutsy is a first-of-its-kind health app that uses conversational AI to do the heavy lifting of digestive tracking.
Instead of endless forms and fragmented logs, users simply chat with Gutsy — a friendly AI that understands natural language, keeps track of food, symptoms, bowel patterns, and sleep, and translates it all into clear patterns and personalized insights.
No need to interpret complex charts or guess what’s causing flare-ups. Gutsy learns over time, offers smart prompts, gives real-time advice, and generates doctor-ready health summaries — all while minimizing the need for tedious, repetitive input.
This isn’t just symptom logging — it’s intelligent, compassionate health management that meets users where they are, and actually helps.
My Role
I led the end-to-end design for Gutsy, from early concept definition and user research through to visual design, prototyping, and high-fidelity UI. I created the full design system, designed dozens of mobile screens, and shaped the tone and personality of the AI assistant to ensure the experience felt warm, human, and helpful.
Duration
March '24 - Oct '25
(7 mos. total)
My Process
Throughout my process, I followed a linear system of exploration and ideation, based on the Nielsen Norman Group’s (NN/g) Design Thinking model. This began with empathy and progressed through a rigorous UX process: discovery, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing. I started with an in-depth investigation of chronic digestive disorders in America and the people most affected.
Here’s a quick sample of the data I uncovered:
Digestive Health in America
70M+
Americans suffer from chronic digestive disorders
72%
Of patients feel stress worsens their symptoms
6-10x
Typical number of daily symptom-related bathroom visits for severe cases
80%
Of users say they’ve felt dismissed or overwhelmed trying to manage gut health on their own
From Gut Feeling to Design Decisions
After researching the medical and emotional impact of chronic digestive disorders—a vast and multi-dimensional problem space—I needed to clarify who was most affected and how those nuances shaped potential solutions. I designed a set of custom infographics to visualize key facts, demographics, and symptoms (featured in the first few slides below). This research helped ground the product in real human context.
From there, I interviewed five individuals suffering from CDDs, across a range of ages and backgrounds. Their lived experiences were synthesized into empathy maps, emotional journey maps, and defined user personas. I also analyzed competing health apps to expose feature gaps and cognitive friction, then began shaping Gutsy’s structure through user flows, information architecture, and wireframes.
These efforts followed the Nielsen Norman Group’s Design Thinking model—moving from empathy through definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Each decision aimed to create a low-friction, emotionally intelligent product grounded in real-world behavior.
These insights clearly revealed which features Gutsy needed most.
Please scroll through the assets I made below to showcase my process! You can click an image to enlarge it.
The Opportunity
The research revealed a clear opportunity: simplify digestive health management by reducing input effort and stress, removing the burden of interpretation, and guiding users with clear, human-centered feedback—all within a single, easy-to-use platform.
Designing for Real LIfe
The deeper I went into research, the clearer it became: the biggest opportunity wasn’t just solving pain points—it was rethinking the entire experience. My “aha” moment came when I realized that users didn’t need another tracker or health diary. They needed a smart, supportive companion—an all-in-one AI assistant that could adapt to their energy level, emotional state, and environment.
This insight reframed Gutsy’s core value. Instead of building isolated features, I designed an integrated experience that felt intelligent, personal, and low-pressure. Gutsy had to reduce friction and meet users where they are—often fatigued, distracted, or in public—without demanding constant attention.
The result was a modular system of flexible tools: hands-free logging, context-aware feedback, and emotional intelligence. Every screen was shaped by a simple principle: support real-life behavior, not ideal behavior.
Conversational Logging
Hands-free voice input lets users log symptoms or meals without typing—ideal for flare-ups, fatigue, or multitasking.
Trigger Detection
Gutsy detects symptom patterns and potential triggers over time, helping users uncover hidden behavioral or food links.
Food Scoring System
Meals are scored based on personal responses, offering a quick way to learn what’s helping—and what’s not.
Digestive Insights Dashboard
Complex patterns are visualized clearly, so users can track their health without cognitive overload or guesswork.
Personalized Recommendations
Smart suggestions respond to behavior trends—helping users make small, confident decisions without overthinking.
Doctor-Ready Summaries
Summaries are auto-generated for clinic visits, giving users a ready-to-go briefing without needing to prep.
Turning Patterns Into Solutions
Gutsy’s all-in-one AI companion tracks meals, hydration, stress, energy, and symptoms—connecting daily behavior to digestive outcomes. It starts with optional voice, text, or widget input, making it easy to log without overthinking. Over time, this data becomes a personalized health story.
Behind the scenes, Gutsy uses pattern recognition and logic-based rules to reveal hidden correlations—like a certain food triggering symptoms hours later. It considers context (like hydration or caffeine), scores flare-up risk, and visualizes these insights in a digestible dashboard.
The result is care that feels intelligent and personal. Gutsy doesn’t just collect data—it transforms it into timely, gentle suggestions like “Try water now” or “Avoid dairy tonight.” Unlike generic trackers, it supports smarter decisions in the moment, helping users reduce symptoms and feel more in control.
Low User Effort, High Support
I shaped Gutsy’s interface around moments of discomfort—reducing cognitive effort while keeping everything soft, simple, and emotionally safe. Large touch targets, subtle animations, and energy-aware components allow users to log, learn, or rest without friction. The result is a visual system that feels calm and responsive, even when users aren’t at their best.
Conversations, Not Charts
Users can speak naturally to Gutsy—no medical jargon, no complicated steps. The assistant understands context, remembers patterns, and responds with clear, supportive prompts tailored to how the user feels. It's tracking that talks back.
Spot the Cause, Sooner
When users log symptoms, Gutsy connects the dots—linking foods, stress, and routines to flare-ups over time. The system flags likely triggers and updates food scores automatically, so users don’t have to guess what went wrong.
See the Big Picture
Gutsy offers a clear, low-effort view of your weekly trends—showing symptom frequency, food scores, hydration, and key improvements at a glance.
Smart Insights, Daily
Gutsy distills data into bite-sized guidance—surfacing what matters most based on patterns, preferences, and health goals. It's like having a nutritionist and coach in your pocket.
Final Product
The current Gutsy prototype showcases two refined flows, each built to support users in real-life moments of stress, fatigue, or urgency:
- Conversational Logging — A responsive input experience using voice, text, and widgets to help users quickly capture meals, symptoms, and daily activity—no overthinking required.
- Trigger Tagging — A guided walkthrough that highlights how Gutsy identifies symptom patterns and turns them into personalized insights.
Together, these flows demonstrate how Gutsy transforms empathetic design into action. Every screen was crafted to feel calm, smart, and emotionally supportive—built for the moments people need help most.
You can scroll down a bit and interact with the prototype below or open it full screen for the best experience!
Results & Testing
Gutsy’s prototype was tested through informal usability sessions and real-world feedback from people actively managing chronic digestive disorders. These early tests focused on three goals: log with ease; surface triggers clearly; and make users feel reassured—not clinical.
The final prototype delivered a calm, friendly, approachable flow for logging symptoms, meals, and patterns. Users could choose between voice, text, or widgets, then instantly receive helpful insights and suggestions. Even without formal onboarding, most testers intuitively understood the interface and praised the emotional tone, clarity, and design system. They especially lauded the single platform and human-feeling experience that Gutsy featured to provide a low stress system to manage chronic health issues. Here are some of the outcomes of my testing:
95%
Of testers prefer conversational/widget-based entry over other food/symptom logging apps
3x
Faster on average input time compared to manual searching and logging with apps like Cara Care and MySymptoms
4.5/5
Ease of use rating for trigger tagging and symptom review
100%
Of users found the tone comforting and less clinical than similar tools
Key Learnings
Through early testing and reflection, I gained valuable insight into how users manage chronic pain and emotional stress while using digital tools. Three takeaways will shape how I design moving forward:
1. Emotional tone matters as much as usability. Users responded best to interfaces that felt calm, personal, and non-clinical—even more than to advanced features.
2. One-size-fits-all input doesn’t work. Voice, tap, and widget logging gave users options based on their setting, comfort, and energy levels—something I’ll prioritize from the start next time.
3. Behavioral nudges work best when they feel like support, not correction. Users appreciated gentle encouragement and light guidance far more than medical-style alerts.
‍
Looking ahead, I’m continuing to seek funding and backend development support for Gutsy. The next steps include building a more robust, data-integrated prototype, expanding the testing pool, and exploring HIPAA-compliant integrations for secure symptom tracking. My goal is to transform Gutsy into a truly intelligent health companion—backed by thoughtful UX and driven by real user needs.
