Aura

Aura is a wearable system that intervenes before motion sickness starts. The refined earbud form tested at 93.75% preference among 16 users.

For motion-sensitive travelers, discomfort often begins before they consciously recognize it. Aura senses early physiological and motion signals, predicts risk, and delivers subtle audio guidance before symptoms escalate.

As a product and industrial designer on a 5-person team, I shaped the product logic, physical prototype, app experience, and interaction flow across a 5-week sprint.

Aura treats motion sickness as a timing problem: it senses the early signals and intervenes with calm audio before discomfort takes hold.

Proactive, not reactiveSense → predict → support100 Hz audio intervention93.75% preferred the refined form

If Aura waited until you felt sick, it was already too late.

An open brief led us to travel: emotionally rich, physically demanding, and full of unresolved friction. But travel is too broad to solve as one problem. Planning, airports, flying, and recovery each carry different needs and constraints.

Our first job was narrowing: finding the one moment in the journey where a product could matter most.

We broke the journey into three phases, before, during, and after travel, then compared where discomfort was most intense and traveler control was lowest.

In-flight motion sickness stood out: high discomfort, low control. Travelers can’t change their environment, stop moving, or recover once symptoms begin.

Decision: Narrow Aura from a general travel concept to an in-flight support system for motion-sensitive travelers.

Motion Sickness Is a Timing Problem

Secondary research reframed the problem: motion sickness is not a sudden symptom but a gradual response to conflict between visual and vestibular signals. The body reacts before the mind notices, so waiting until users feel nauseous is already too late.

Decision: Support should begin before discomfort becomes difficult to manage.

Audio as Intervention

Research identified 100 Hz low-frequency audio as a credible way to reduce dizziness, a passive support that works while sitting still or with eyes closed.

Design implication: Make calming audio Aura’s first response, with no visual attention or active input required.

The Gap in Existing Solutions

Comparing remedies across medication, patches, wearables, pressure tools, and behavioral strategies revealed a shared weakness: nearly all require advance preparation or active self-management after discomfort begins. Few support the early buildup phase, when travelers need help but may not yet recognize it.

Insight: Aura’s opportunity was not relieving nausea. It was anticipating discomfort.

I sketched broadly across levels of intervention, keeping the field open before narrowing: app guidance, pressure wearables, visual reduction tools, environmental supports, and audio concepts.

A 2×2 of user value against feasibility exposed the core tradeoff: concepts that were easy to build depended on user action, while passive physical remedies lacked the sensing needed for proactive support. Only an ear-worn wearable could deliver both.

Decision: Focus on an audio-first wearable that senses early risk, interprets flight context, and intervenes quietly before symptoms escalate.

I led the physical prototyping while teammates built the digital flow, then we tested the combined hardware and app experience with users for fit, stability, comfort, and system clarity.

What Testing Revealed

Testing exposed constraints that CAD and static screens had hidden.

Decision: Shift the hardware toward a more stable bar-oriented structure and simplify the app around low-attention status feedback.

Physical Refinement

Ergonomic testing revealed fit, pressure, and weight issues across different ear shapes, glasses, hairstyles, and head movement.

I shifted the hardware toward a bar-oriented structure: more stable, more even weight distribution, more internal room for sensing and audio components.

Validated with 16 people, and 93.75% preferred the refined earbud form.

Digital Refinement

I simplified the interface around low-attention feedback: clearer status cards, calmer motion states, and direct cues showing when Aura is monitoring, preparing, or intervening.

Decision: Refine Aura as one connected hardware and app experience, more stable to wear, easier to read, and easier to trust.

A Connected System for Proactive Support

The final concept works in three layers: Aura Buds capture early body and motion signals, the app interprets them with travel context, and the system responds with subtle audio guidance, before the traveler has to actively manage symptoms.

System logic: Aura doesn’t wait for users to report discomfort. It prepares support early, so the experience feels timely, calm, and low-effort.

In-Flight Experience

I mapped Aura across pre-travel preparation, in-flight monitoring, and turbulence response to define its tone: proactive but not alarming, explaining enough to build trust without demanding attention.

Decision: Design Aura’s support as quiet preparation, not urgent correction.

Aura Buds

Hardware System

Sense

HR, HRV, motion, proximity

Predict

Early motion-sickness risk

Support

100 Hz tone, breathing guidance, soundscapes

Signal

At-a-glance wellness status

The buds sense physiological and motion signals, deliver 100 Hz grounding audio and calming soundscapes, and give low-attention feedback through subtle cues, familiar enough for travel and with a clear reason to exist beyond everyday earbuds.

Aura App

One interaction principle: guided, not demanding. The interface focuses on setup, trip context, support preferences, and at-a-glance status, so users stay informed without managing the system.

Final outcome: A proactive support system, wearable enough for travel, intelligent enough to respond to changing conditions, and calm enough not to overwhelm.

In March 2026, Samsung launched Hearapy, a free app that plays a 100 Hz tone through the Galaxy Buds4 Pro to relieve motion sickness before a trip. It is built on the same 2025 Nagoya University study that Aura’s research cited, delivered through the same form factor, ear-worn buds tuned for low-frequency output, and it reaches one of the largest earbud audiences in the world.

We did not know Samsung was working on this. Five students, in five weeks, with no lab and no hardware budget, read the same evidence, weighed the same form factors, and arrived at the same answer as a company with the resources to ship it to millions. That is what I take from it: the research and the systems thinking were sound enough to converge with the industry rather than follow it.

Samsung’s launch also shows how far the problem space reaches. Hearapy is a one-minute tone the user starts before travel. Aura goes one step further: it senses risk and times the intervention itself, so the traveler never has to decide when to press play. The demand is now proven at scale. The question Aura was built to answer, when to intervene, is still open.

Next Step: From Concept to Evidence

Continuing Aura would mean longitudinal testing across repeated flights and different motion-sickness patterns, shifting the question from whether the concept feels compelling to whether the system senses risk reliably and stays trusted over time.

The conceptual case is made. The next case is evidence.

What I Learned