What it does
MAB is a wellness digital marketplace promotes holistic care towards building resilience and transforming anxiety management for college students and young professionals, by providing tactile and digital tailored toolkits that align with their interests.
Your inspiration
Pulling all-nighters through design college, I fought panic loops nobody’s favorite meditation app could touch. My grandfather’s trick to focus breathe while rolling a smooth stone worked instantly and made me wonder why no product marries digital guidance with tactile calm. Thesis interviews with 30 students and clinicians confirmed the gaps like therapy wait-lists too long, apps too generic, fidget tools uncurated. So I sketched a hybrid -an app that predicts spikes and personalizes grounding kits, each learning from the other.
How it works
Three quick layers that feel more like a conversation than a form- Emotion-first pulse check. The app opens with a color-wheel of feelings and a short story prompt “What’s weighing on you most today?”. Recognizing the emotion is the first step towards healing. Goal-based roadmap. Next, you pick up to two outcomes (sleep through the night, quiet racing thoughts in class, stay focused at work. These choices set the app’s coaching cadence, success metrics, and the type of drills it will prioritize. Sensory profile, finally, rapid swipes reveal your hobby hooks (gaming, art, fitness), preferred textures (smooth, squishy, weighted), and scents or sounds you love. A recommendation engine cross-references these three layers with clinical evidence and sends a starter “grounding kit” matched to both your goals and sensory joys, so every stone, putty, or weighted band already feels personally meaningful, boosting the odds you’ll actually use it when anxiety flares.
Design process
MAB started with me trying to understand myself better by realizing I do not want another screen to tell me how to breathe when most of my issues stem from the screens I own. Anxiety care collapses when every mind is treated the same. After watching classmates quit expensive, one-size-fits-all apps, I asked what truly calms my own spikes. The answer wasn’t another video it was gripping a cool stone while talking feelings through in real time. That insight became the compass for My Anonymous Brain. I set out to create a space where students can safely test what helps them, without punitive paywalls. Conversations with SCAD peers and U.S. clinicians surfaced two consistent blockers: high cost and impersonal content. To probe a solution I built a lean “add-to-cart” demo stocked with physical objects, digital prompts, and hybrid tools. The signal was clear: every participant curated a personal trio, like a compression-therapy jacket, guided breathing, and an AI check-in, anchored to their interests and senses. A full 100 % engagement rate confirmed the core hypothesis validated that anxiety care must feel chosen, not prescribed.
How it is different
MAB is the only anxiety platform built as a true closed-loop of app + tactile kit: each in-app calm drill points to a specific object in your pocket, and the relief score you give instantly reshapes both tomorrow’s alert and next month’s shipment. Personalization starts with a 10-second feeling wheel, a goal pick, and a “joy profile,” not a 40-item clinical form, so users feel seen before they even create an account. A lightweight, on-device model predicts stress up to 30 minutes early while keeping all sensor data encrypted on the phone. Because the kit library links textures and scents to hobbies, a compression scarf for fashion lovers, a haptic wristpad for gamers, people get tools they actually want to use. And the starter bundle costs less than a single therapy copay, with no paywalls on core drills, something no one-size-fits-all app or generic gadget set can match.
Future plans
We’re seeking opportunities to work with SCAD Counseling Services so their clinicians and I can co-design a campus-ready pilot. A six-week workshop series will pick 3–4 tactile tools, script matching app drills, and plan privacy safeguards. After we get a sign-off from the university we’ll run a 30-student micro-trial to test alerts, objects, and relief tracking, harvesting data to tune the on-device model. Proven feasibility will unlock a 100-student semester study, guide compostable packaging tweaks, and prepare us for an FDA Safer-Tech submission and broader campus roll-out.
Awards
Winner, inaugural 2025 SCADapult Venture Showcase (Savannah College of Art and Design), recognized for design-led innovation in student mental-wellness.
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