How We Bridged the Gap Between Food Nostalgia & the Present with ReminiSense
In 3 days at Figma's national designathon, my team and I created ReminiSense- a speculative smart spoon that lets users vividly re-experience cherished food memories using their instant recall superpower.
Slide Deck
Project Overview
I led user research during UC Berkeley's Cal Day, collecting 50+ responses across a wide demographic. I guided problem framing, ideation, MVP scoping, and storytelling, focusing on emotional resonance, collaboration, and human-centered design.
Role
Lead UX Researcher & Strategist
Team
1 Freshman
1 Sophomore
1 Junior Exchange Student
1 Senior
Tools
Figma (Design, FigJam, Slides)
Google Forms
Spotify Podcasts
Imagine this:
You’re craving boba, so you find the nearest spot. It’s not a named brand, and even lists 'boba' as 'bubble tea'. Nonetheless, you order. You receive your drink, take a sip. And then, a light flickers in your head.
The boba tastes exactly like the one you used to get after a midterm and final. That old boba place closed years ago, and you always thought that experience could never be replicated. Except now. In this untraditional spot, the past is suddenly, vividly, present.
Prompt
Relived Memories Aren’t Certain
The prompt from Figma’s national designathon, FigBuild, challenged us:
“Invent a superpower that would solve a major challenge in your life, and design a tool, platform, or system that would help you manage your superpower effectively.”
We chose to focus on a universal human experience: the fleeting nature of cherished memories tied to food (Arsham & Hayes, 2023).
Our goal: Design a tool that was not only imaginative but also feasible and impactful, respectfully interacting with the sensitive realm of personal memories. (González-Márquez, 2023).
Superpower: Instant Recall
Regular human memories are fleeting and always changing.
This superpower gives you an ability to instantly recall the exact taste of any meal you’ve ever had. Every bite becomes a memory marker, giving you the ability to instantly summon the flavor, feeling, and context of any dish you’ve experienced.
No Instant Recall
With Instant Recall
Limitation: These memories live only inside your head. You can’t see them, revisit them visually, or share them with others. They’re vivid, but invisible.
Assembling the League
The first design challenge wasn’t a product, it was people.
As the designathon approached, I had offers to team up with strong candidates from different Universities. However, I made a deliberate decision: instead of optimizing for resumes, I wanted to build with people I believed in, fostering a collaborative environment where mutual understanding could thrive, rather than just chasing a win.
Me and my team out and about!
Choosing my friends meant embracing unpredictability. The designathon overlapped with Cal Day, Berkeley’s annual event for incoming freshman.
My teammates and I had preplanned obligations so we weren’t always aligned, but I made it my mission to lead with empathy and clarity, recognizing that our diverse schedules required flexible solutions.
Leading the Mission With Structure Rather Than Authority
Although I wasn’t formally titled as “project manager,” I instinctively stepped into a strategic role, understanding that a clear, yet flexible, plan was essential for our success.
I initiated scheduling through When2Meet and leveraged Google Calendar to coordinate our varied availability, minimizing conflicts.
I established mandatory 11 PM daily syncs to ensure consistent progress review, alignment, and a chance to check in on everyone's well-being. This structured approach:
ensured accountability
respected individual commitments
Instead of pushing, I pulled: helping teammates find their own momentum and making space for every voice, ensuring everyone felt valued and engaged.
Navigating the Problem Space
The heart of our collaboration lay in the problem identification phase, which I facilitated on FigJam. I guided the team through structured elimination rounds, moving from individual pain point listings to collective voting using the stamp tool.
I ensured each team member articulated their rationale for their chosen sticky notes, fostering deeper discussion and understanding. This allowed us to collectively identify true pain points from diverse perspectives.
“What is something that feels frustrating, inefficient, challenging”
A Civil War: Without Passion , There’s no Motivation
This process led us to a significant standstill: a 3-vs-1 debate between two compelling ideas:
I could sense that if we chose one over the other, someone might start disengaging because they wouldn’t feel connected to the problem.
So, I proposed a bridge. Not to “make everyone happy,” but to create a concept that honored both ideas and reignited shared passion across the team. I understood that without passion, there’s no motivation. And without motivation, there’s no momentum.
This raw, yet unifying concept...
garnered unanimous positive feedback
sparked an undeniable passion from both sides
solidified the foundation for our core problem statement
Problem Statement
Our lives are woven with moments defined by sensory experiences. Yet these precise sensations and emotions often remain locked within our minds, leading to a sense longing for experiences that cannot be replicated.
Problem Statement
Our lives are woven with moments defined by sensory experiences. Yet these precise sensations and emotions often remain locked within our minds, leading to a sense longing for experiences that cannot be replicated.
How Might We…
With our problem statement and core pain point clearly defined, we translated these challenges into actionable opportunities by crafting several 'How Might We' (HMW) statements, giving room for refinement after our research process:
How might we help individuals truly re-experience cherished sensory memories, particularly those tied to food?
How might we enable people to bridge the gap between past sensory experiences and their present reality?
How might we design a tool that can harness an imaginative superpower to interact with and evoke specific sensory memories?
How might we help people bring their food memories to life, transforming feelings and moments they can’t quite recreate into immersive experiences they can see and feel again?
Chapter 1: Defining
User Research
To validate our initial assumptions, uncover deeper user needs, and prioritize which 'How Might We' statement offered the most impactful design opportunity, we initiated our research phase.
User Surveys
We connected with real people on Cal Day, Berkeley’s annual event for incoming freshman.
Cal Day presented a unique opportunity. It typically attracts tens of thousands of attendees annually, encompassing a vast and diverse demographic:
prospective students
current students, parents
alumni from various cultural backgrounds and age groups.
I leveraged this campus-wide event to reach a broad, multigenerational audience, crucial for understanding the universal nature of food memories across life stages.
To efficiently capture these insights, I developed a Google Forms survey accessible via a scannable barcode, ensuring minimal disruption to participants' time.
We collected 50+ responses from participants aged 15-55. This rapid data collection provided rich initial perspectives on how food connects to
memory
emotion
culture
from teenage nostalgia to intergenerational grief.
Key Findings & Insights
Our survey responses revealed several insights into the relationship between food and memory:
Eating with Emotion
90%
of respondents associated food with childhood, family events, and life milestones
Want Sensory Immersion
83%
of respondents wished to relive memories through taste, smell, or texture
Competitive Analysis
We also delved into competitive analysis. Memories are personal and are articulated differently by each user. Therefore we leveraged Spotify podcasts for personal stories, and slightly explored the biological mechanisms of taste perception and the emotional neuroscience of memory.
Refined How Might We...
Now, with a comprehensive understanding from both primary and competitive analysis research, we refined our focus to a single, actionable 'How Might We' statement that would directly guide our design efforts:
“How might we… help people bring their food memories to life, transforming feelings and moments they can’t quite recreate into immersive experiences they can see and feel again?”
This HMW encapsulates the core pain point of invisible, inexpressible memories while emphasizing the user's deep desire for sensory re-immersion, making it the most impactful and actionable direction for our solution.
Chapter 2: Research
The Tool
Deciding the Weapon of Choice
I wanted our solution to break beyond the bounds of a typical app or website, seeking an interface and tool form that was profoundly backed by user insights.
Our research strongly confirmed a pivotal detail: people primarily seek to re-experience memories through taste, smell, and other sensory feelings (Harvard Gazette, 2020). This critical finding immediately steered our ideation towards a tool deeply connected to the sensory part of the human experience.
We explored several initial concepts for ReminiSense's form factor:
Glasses/VR Headsets
Immersive visuals and a 360° environment
Lacked direct sensory connection
Socially awkward for on the go use
Spoon
Everyday object linked to food & taste
Familiar, minimizes adoption barriers
Discreet without drawing attention
Single use, may limit other interactions
Not all foods are scoopable
Oral Microchips/Piercings
Offers direct sensory input for taste
Potentially too invasive
Likely to face user acceptance barriers
Ultimately, we converged on the spoon as the optimal form factor. This choice was deliberate: it directly leveraged the primary sensory input crucial for re-experiencing food memories while balancing feasibility, user comfort, and integration into daily life.
Use Cases and User Flow
Having established the optimal form factor in the spoon, we moved to define the practical application of ReminiSense, detailing how users would interact with the tool to bring their cherished food memories to life.
Defining Our MVP: Prioritizing Core Features
Given the tight 3-day designathon timeline, determining our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was crucial to focus our efforts. We held a dedicated brainstorming session, utilizing a feature prioritization matrix to weigh each potential feature against its impact on the core problem statement and its feasibility within the short timeframe.
High Priority
Low Priority
Low Feasibility
High Feasibility
Through collaborative discussions, we consistently asked ourselves: "What is the absolute fastest and most direct way to enable a user to re-experience a sensory food memory?"
This led us to prioritize direct memory recall and immersive visualization as the non-negotiable core of ReminiSense's initial offering. Features like extensive memory organization or sharing capabilities were consciously deprioritized for future iterations, allowing us to deliver a highly focused and impactful MVP.
Use Cases
ReminiSense is designed to seamlessly integrate into everyday life, serving various emotional and social needs related to food memories. Here are a few key use cases:
Revisiting Personal Nostalgia
A user, perhaps feeling a pang of longing for their grandmother's specific stew, uses ReminiSense to instantly re-experience the precise taste, smell, and the warm, comforting atmosphere of her kitchen.
Re-experiencing a Milestone Moment
A college student, far from home, uses ReminiSense to vividly recall the taste of a traditional dish from a family holiday, re-immersing themselves in the celebration and the presence of loved ones during that significant event.
User Flow
The core user flow for re-experiencing a memory with ReminiSense is designed to be intuitive and magical, leveraging the familiarity of the spoon as the primary interface. This streamlined approach reflects our MVP focus on immediate, immersive recall.
Edge Cases
Finding the Kryptonite for Our Tool
We considered potential backlashes. The “kryptonite” to ReminiSense. This critical step ensured we designed for robustness and user well-being.
“What if a food is tied to multiple memories?”
Problem: One taste may recall different events for a user, especially across cultures or life stages.
Solution: Allow users to select from a short, personalized list of potential memories.
“What if users try to revisit the same memory excessively?”
Problem: Replaying a memory too often might reduce its emotional impact or create dependency.
Solution: Introduce a “no replay” option or cool-down period to encourage intentional reflection.
“What if the memory is painful or traumatic?”
Problem: Some food memories may be tied to grief, loss, or difficult moments.
Solution: Offer filtering preferences. We decided not to deny memories. Many evoke different, valid reactions.
Chapter 3: Solution
Ideation & Prototyping
We translated our user flows into low-fidelity wireframes and then high-fidelity mockups in Figma, envisioning the virtual interface that would appear before the user's eyes.
Landing Screen
Preview Page
Browsing Option
Implementing User Flows: We created interactive prototypes in Figma to demonstrate the seamless transition from spoon insertion to memory recall.
Prototype Link
The Pitch
Crafting an Emotional Narrative
For the final presentation, I strongly advocated for a storytelling narrative, believing that powerful delivery was as crucial as a brilliant design. I aimed to string together a narrative that would "speak to the judges' heart."
Personal Stories & Emotional Resonance
A key addition I championed was the integration of deeply personal stories. I interviewed my own mom about her food memories and experiences being away from home, and a teammate interviewed her boyfriend about how food helped him cope with a long-distance relationship.
We intentionally curated childhood photos, not just of ourselves eating, but focusing on the context. Compiling these images was emotional; I noticed profound details, like a picture of my teammate's siblings eating while their tired father watched with longing eyes.
Meticulous Presentation
I was meticulous in setting up our slides, strategically placing pictures where I thought judges' eyes would naturally land and using scannable words for clarity.
While time constraints meant I couldn't polish every detail to its full potential, I focused on creating a compelling and visually engaging experience that effectively conveyed our product's emotional impact.
Usability testing on my friend
Chapter 4: Ideation
Reflection
We Lost the Battle, but Won the War
In the end, we didn’t win the designathon, however, I am immensely proud of the decision I made at the beginning to work with my friends. The experience yielded far more than a potential prize; it was a crucible for significant personal and professional growth.
I gained invaluable experience in:
Time Management: Navigating complex schedules and tight deadlines within a short time frame.
Workarounds & Adaptability: Finding creative solutions when ideal conditions weren't met (e.g., impromptu street surveys, using podcasts for research).
Collaborative Leadership: Learning to lead a diverse team with empathy, motivating members, facilitating consensus, and empowering individual contributions.
Balancing Authority & Empathy: Understanding how to be constructively strict without making the project feel like a chore, fostering engagement over obligation.
Beyond the technical skills, I emerged from the designathon with a deeper understanding of my own food memories and how they have shaped me. This project reinforced my passion for human-centered design and my ability to tackle complex problems with creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking.
Chapter 5: Reflection
Season 2?
The Next Chapter for ReminiSense
If given more time, future iterations of ReminiSense would focus on:
Expanded Sensory Integration: Researching and incorporating other sensory inputs like smell and touch for an even more immersive experience.
Advanced Memory Categorization: Developing a more sophisticated system for users to tag, filter, and organize their memories based on emotional context, people, or places.
User Testing & Iteration: Conducting in-depth usability testing with a higher-fidelity prototype to uncover further pain points and refine the interaction model.
Ethical Considerations: A deeper dive into the long-term psychological impacts of constantly re-experiencing memories and designing features that promote healthy memory engagement.
