Gutsy
The future of gut health management with a conversational interface.
The Problem
People with chronic digestive disorders—especially IBS, IBD (ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease), celiac disease, and GERD—face significant daily challenges managing symptoms that disrupt basic activities like eating, working, family time, and even starting their day. Restroom urgency, pain, and stress make consistent routines difficult. Lifestyle modifications like diet, exercise, and stress management are important, but medical professionals and existing health solutions like apps and therapy fall short in providing individualized health support, require tedious data entry and time-consuming check-ins, and regularly rely on broad assumptions rather than on individual symptoms. As a result, users are left feeling hopeless that their unique personal health complications are being addressed.
The Solution
Gutsy is designed as a personalized health management platform using an AI chat interface that is easy to communicate with, and focuses entirely on the user as an understanding and knowledgeable health companion. The app streamlines data entry to provide accurate tracking of health factors, and individualized feedback with discreet and simplified voice-, text-, and widget-based data logging for optimally efficient health management.
My Role
Timeline
Mentors
Platform
Above is a quick glance at a few of Gutsy's screens, representing the app's conversational interface and other features.
Design Process
To understand how to better support individuals suffering from chronic digestive disorders (CDDs), I took a deep dive into both the problem space and the competitive landscape. Following the "design thinking" methodology, I conducted user interviews, analyzed existing CDD management apps, and researched the physical, emotional, and logistical challenges people face in tracking and managing their condition.
I synthesized insights into journey maps, user personas, and key problem statements, and used these to drive design decisions. From empathy mapping to sketching low-fidelity wireframes, every step focused on reducing stress and creating a more personal, engaging experience for people navigating these conditions. You can explore my full research and visuals below.
View My Research & Design
To understand how to better support individuals suffering from chronic digestive disorders (CDDs), I took a deep dive into both the problem space and the competitive landscape. Following the "design thinking" methodology, I conducted user interviews, analyzed existing CDD management apps, and researched the physical, emotional, and logistical challenges people face in tracking and managing their condition.
I synthesized insights into journey maps, user personas, and key problem statements, and used these to drive design decisions. From empathy mapping to sketching low-fidelity wireframes, every step focused on reducing stress and creating a more personal, engaging experience for people navigating these conditions. You can explore my full research and visuals below.
Designing the Details
I refined the interface with thoughtful touches — clean overlays, subtle motion, and components built to feel calm, clear, and quietly intelligent in order to seem like a helpful health companion.
Friendly AIÂ Companion
- Checks in with user to help manage health.
- Gets to know and focuses on each user.
Communicates with Familiar Chat Interface
Speaking to the Gutsy companion is like speaking to a friend.
Provides Easy to Understand Nutritional Tips and Alerts
Gutsy helps users understand what foods and other factors may be helping or hurting them.
Final Product
The current Gutsy prototype was built to demonstrate the full user experience across two key flows: symptom logging and progress tracking. It includes over 30 high-fidelity screens and showcases the core features, from multimodal input options to a personalized data dashboard.
The interface was designed mobile-first to reflect how users interact with health tools in real life. Special attention was given to accessibility, reducing cognitive load, and preserving user autonomy—whether they prefer to type, talk, or tap. Gutsy fills a critical gap in digestive health management by reducing the friction of symptom tracking. Its AI-assisted, multimodal interface streamlines the logging process—eliminating an estimated 60–70% of the manual effort required by traditional health apps.
Please explore the full prototype below!
Results
By grounding the design process in empathy and thorough research, I was able to define clear user needs and translate them into intuitive features that reduce the stress of managing chronic digestive disorders. The final prototype integrates multimodal input (voice, text, widgets) and a calming, accessible interface that empowers users to log symptoms quickly, stay consistent, and regain a sense of control over their health routines.
While Gutsy is still in the prototyping phase, early user testing showed strong validation of core design decisions. Test users found the experience significantly easier than paper or traditional app-based logging, with over 80% successfully completing tasks with no errors or confusion. The prototype currently supports two complete user flows, 30+ high-fidelity screens, and includes a flexible design system built for future scalability. These results reflect the power of thoughtful UX to turn complex, emotionally charged problems into streamlined, confidence-building experiences.
80%
Completed Tasks with 0 friction
4/5
Preferred Voice Input Over Manual
50%
Drop in Confusion During V2 Onboarding
5/5
Found Logging Easy or Very Easy
Like what you see?
Please check out more of my case studies below, or reach out to collaborate—I'd love to hear from you!
swdsull@gmail.com
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