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UX DESIGN · 2026

Wander

The walk is the point.

Wander
PROBLEM_

The tools optimise for speed. Nobody designed for the walk itself.

Google Maps optimises for fastest. Strava optimises for performance. 28 of 34 survey respondents said they walk to clear their head — but none described it as intentional. It just happens, in spite of the tools, not because of them.

MY ROLE_

Designer on a team of two — research through final prototype.

Co-owned all research, synthesis, concept development, and UI design in Figma across the full 48 hours.

Cornell UX Design Club Design-a-thonMobile UXFigma
RESEARCH_

The phone was making the walk worse.

Short survey to 15 respondents on walking habits and mid-walk phone behaviour, backed by secondary research — attention restoration theory (Kaplan, 1995) and Stanford's study on walking and creative cognition (Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014). The finding that shaped everything: people already walk to decompress. The tools just get in the way.

Walking already works. We just need to protect it from the phone.

KEY INSIGHT_

CHALLENGE_

How do you build an app whose job is to get you off the app?

We identified two moments to serve — time with no destination, and a destination with no rush. Both shared the same need: a reset. Unifying them under one product made the concept legible in a single sentence.

PROCESS_

Cosmos to wireframe to prototype — without breaking the sprint.

Sourced visual direction on Cosmos, wireframed in Figma, then used AI to rapidly build out the prototype. Once the prototype was done, we moved into Figma to produce the final creatives and presentation assets.

Once the walk starts, the app moves to the lock screen widget — prompt and distance only. No step counts. No streaks. No gamification. Every other walking app pulls you into the screen; Wander actively pushes you out of it.

Layout placeholder
SOLUTION_

Two modes, one ritual — built and submitted in 48 hours.

Figma prototype covering both modes, the prompt reveal, the active walk state with lock screen widget, and the end-of-walk screen — with stylised maps using Savannah's grid as the test environment.

LIVE APP_

The shipped Wander build is embedded below.

This is the actual live app, not a mockup. You can interact with it here, then open it in a separate tab if you want the full browser context.

MOBILE LIVE VIEW_

Same live build, framed for the phone viewport.

OUTCOMES_

The hardest constraint was intentional disappearance.

Building something that works by getting out of the way runs against every instinct in product design. If I were to continue, I'd refine the screens further and sharpen the logic behind both modes — how the loop calculates and adjusts a route, and how the route character system actually works under the hood.

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