Sand
- Timeline
- One weekend
- FigBuild 2026
- Team
- 4 UC Berkeley students
- Tools
- Figma
- Figma Make
- Gemini
- Nano Banana
- Skills
- Product Design
- Prototyping
- Demo Video
Sand is an AR and biometric wearable that turns your body clock into a focus tool, without turning you into a score. I designed and prototyped every screen in the app, made the demo video, and learned Figma Make on the job.
Task:
“Identify something intangible, invisible, or previously unmeasurable about the human sensory experience and design a speculative tool to track and influence it.”
“This tool should be designed to support a wellness goal or behavioral change for an individual or a group.”
- Figbuild 2026 design prompt
Ideation:
We built Sand over one weekend, during one of the busiest times of the year. Out of procrastination stress, I took a little scroll break...and realized my 10-minute brain-rot session had turned into 2 hours. That gap is exactly what we ended up designing for.
It begged the question - how can 2 hours feel like 10 minutes? This phenomenon has a name...
def.
Chronoception:
Our subjective perception of time
Research
How does Gen-Z experience time?
This question guided our exploration into chronoception, a seemingly imperceptible sense.
Brain
While humans possess no dedicated sensory organ for time, the brain integrates a variety of endogenous and sensory inputs to create a temporal sense.
Time Blindness
A 2022 study on college students found that 47.1% underestimated how long their selected tasks would take, 31.9% overestimated the time required, and only 21% predicted their task duration exactly.
Environment
Chronic time pressure is a leading predictor of depression, anxiety, and stress, made worse by a 24/7 economy that deprioritizes sleep and rest.
Unsurprisingly, we're terrible at estimating time.
- 47%of Gen Z consider arriving 5 to 10 minutes late to be "on time," while 70% of Baby Boomers think "on time" means arriving early (2024 survey).
- 4.45×Gen Z's likelihood, versus older adults, of making errors on a classic clock-drawing test (2026 study).
User Research: Survey Results (31 respondents)
Time Blindness
Students consistently underestimate how long tasks will take, often losing hours without realizing it. Without external cues, time slips — and rest gets sacrificed as a result.
Body Signal
Disconnect
When focused or distracted by screens, students stop registering physical needs like hunger, fatigue, and sleep. By the time they notice, the damage is already done.
The research pointed to two problems: students lose track of time, and they stop noticing hunger, fatigue, and sleep until it's too late.
Accessibility & Feasibility
- 43%of our 31 survey respondents were dissatisfied with smart trackers because they're uncomfortable and unappealing to wear.
- 41%didn't like being given data after the fact, when they couldn't do anything with it.
- 70%preferred a tool that works in their environment in real time to keep them in flow over one that hands them a metric at the end of the day.
So we chose a seamless design that pairs AR glasses with a ring, blending into a user's day instead of adding another screen to check.
Core Philosophy
Most wearables answer this problem with a dashboard. Our team took DATA C104 (Human Contexts & Ethics of Data) at Berkeley together, where we read Foucault on the Panopticon and Ian Hacking on the quantified self. The takeaway: measurements turn into labels, and labels start shaping the person they were meant to describe. So we set one rule. Sand shouldn't be another tracker, and every feature had to answer one question: does this give the user agency, or does it quietly surveil them?
We wanted Sand to integrate easily into your day, i.e. change modes on its own. That single decision drove everything else about the design.
If the system is already reading your state and adjusting your environment in the moment, it shouldn't also be asking for your attention while it does it. So Sand stays ambient: it works in the background and eases you toward rest when the signals say so.
That made the usual output unnecessary. A readiness score is what a device gives you when it can't do anything itself. If the system can act in the moment, the number has nothing left to accomplish — except to teach you to check the score instead of checking how you feel.
After synthesizing all of the metrics that contribute to chronoception...
Heart Rate Variability
Light
Suprachiasmatic Nucleus Cycle (SCN)
Sleep Pressure
Haptic Entrainment
Vagal Tone
we decided to develop a wearables ecosystem.
What we built
Sand pairs two wearables with a phone app. The hardware stayed a concept for the weekend; the app is what we designed and prototyped, and it's what the rest of this case study shows.
The ring
Reads your internal rhythms: heart rate variability, sleep pressure, and where you are in your SCN (circadian) cycle.
The shades
Sand's name for its AR glasses. When focus drops, they dim what's around you, so you feel the shift instead of reading a number.
DESIGN
Navigation Overview
Four screens carry the whole app: the splash, the mode you're in right now (here, Steady, with focus time remaining), a suggested switch when your signals change, and a log of what Sand did for you today.
DESIGN
Onboarding
Setup is two steps: put on your shades, then see the gap between felt time and clock time for yourself.
DESIGN
Sand Switch Modes
Sand moves between modes on its own. Steady holds a focus block, Sand suggests Rest when your signals call for it, and the day ends with a recap of how time ran for you.
THESIS
Mist Mode
Mist is where the DATA C104 idea became a feature. Sand is always reading you: HRV, sleep pressure, ambient light, vagal tone, some from the ring and some from the shades. Mist is the screen where you get to see that list and turn pieces of it off. Turning something off doesn't mean Sand stops showing it to you. It means Sand stops reading it. The baseline adjusts and the app keeps working with less. You can step back from your data without giving up the thing.
Outcome
Every feature was an ethics question
We submitted Sand to FigBuild 2026. Friday disappeared into problem scoping, Saturday into a research and design marathon, and Sunday into the sprint to finish, so we were living the time blindness we were designing for.
The screens weren't the hard part. Every feature turned into the same two questions: does this give the user agency, or does it quietly surveil them? Does it surface data, or dissolve into the experience? Mist Mode is where we landed: Sand only reads what you let it.
What I'm proudest of is that Sand has a point of view: wearables should disappear into your day instead of grading it. We built something we would actually use. Along the way I learned Figma Make, ethical design, AR prototyping, and how to design around AI models.
With more time, we'd build
- A working prototype that connects real biometric sensors to AR cues.
- Machine learning that learns each person's own rhythm instead of one model for everyone.
- Longitudinal testing of how Sand affects focus, burnout, and perceived time.