How might we integrate LUI and GUI to design a warm, emotionally intelligent AI companion that brings joy and connection to everyday life?
Context: Product design freelance work for an AI startup in China, designing the product from 0 to 1 individually. My Role: The first product designer in the team, led product design from scratch.
Impact: The MVP version launched, gained 27,000+ users, received 800+ reviews, and maintained an average rating of 5 out of 5 within four months. 🥳
In the AI era, we didn’t want to build just another chatbot — we wanted to create an emotional companion.
This mobile app introduces a cute cat as the main AI character — one that chats with you, remembers your habits, offers emotional reminders, and lives its own life that grows with and is shaped by you. Through features like daily conversations, smart reminders, reflective diary writing, gift-sending, and dynamic personality growth, we designed an experience that feels not just intelligent like another AI product — but joyful, healing, and emotionally present like a real relationship.
Core Features Overviews
Background- Why We Believe It Works
Opportunity Discovery from Current Products in Market We looked at what made products like Duolingo, Finch, and Tolan successful — and found a shared pattern: emotional connection, character-driven design, and playful interaction drive long-term user engagement.
We believe it’s this holistic experience — emotional resonance, expressive visuals, personality-rich and delightful interaction — that keeps users engaged.
Early Validation from Real Users Our early MVP gained positive signals from real user feedback and social media engagement. These insights gave us confidence in the emotional value and experience direction of the product.
My Contribution as a Product Designer
Product Experience Design: From LUI to GUI I worked on both language-based and graphical interactions. For the language-based interactions, I designed interactions that live inside natural conversation — for example, how a reminder is set through dialogue without breaking the converstional flow. For the graphical-based interactions, I led the end-to-end experience design: defining the information architecture, crafting UI and visual language, and collaborating closely with engineers to ensure high-quality delivery.
Defining the Visual Language Together with a professional visual designer, I helped define the product’s visual language — one that feels soft, warm, and emotionally expressive. I led the early style exploration and visual research, set the overall tone and color direction, and built the initial minimal design system.
Motion and Micro-Interaction Design I also worked on micro-interactions and motion to enhance the overall product experiences. Below are a few examples.
This is just a sneak peek into the design behind our AI cat companion. If you're curious to learn more or just want to chat about product design, feel free to reach out! 🐾