LUCA Stress App

Creative Director for a biometric-based stress monitoring mobile application.

LUCA was developed to offer an objective measurement of stress using heart rate data obtained from a wearable device in three areas linked to mental wellness: Cardiac Health, Activity Health, and Sleep Health.

Stress is often talked about as a mental condition but the application made visible the ways stress manifests physically. To help users connect to the idea that negative stress can have a physical impact, progress through the application could be measured via the growth of a (fantastical) multicellular organism, affectionately named LUCA, or, “Last Universal Common Ancestor”, a concept in science that all life on Earth can be traced back to a single organism. By using the app to track and learn about stress, the user would ‘grow’ the LUCA and be able to see their own stress evolution manifest.

Other components to the application included a psychology-based journey where users could learn how personality, emotional intelligence, coping mechanisms, and cognitive distortions impact stress response, a test for Insomnia and Burnout, and a bi-weekly Perceived Stress Assessment.