WHISPER
WHISPER is a mobile app for the emotional category that no platform was built for. Not a crisis. Not content. The specific quiet weight of something that happened but has nowhere to go - too small for therapy, too personal for social media, too tangled to text. Whisper gives it a place. Users share through a conversational interface, identity is protected by default, and the system returns the one thing they actually needed: a stranger's whisper carrying the same feeling underneath theirs. Designed in 24 hours for Protothon 2026's Mental Well-Being Track and awarded 1st Place among 50 submissions.
Role
Product Designer
Date
May 2026
Responsibility
UX/UI Deisgn
Type
Hackathon (team of 3) → Solo Revision
PROBLEM
Some Feelings Have Nowhere to Go
This is Minji.
Minji is a sophomore studying abroad in the US. Today she found out a girl from her class added everyone on Instagram after their group project.
Everyone except her. Maybe she just forgot. Maybe she didn't. It's too tangled to bring up. Too real to just let go. Not the kind of thing you text someone about, and definitely not the kind of thing you post online. So it just sits there.
PAIN POINT
Why Existing Spaces Fall Short
01. Too public to be honest
Social media turns feelings into posts, reactions, and records.
02. Too close to say everything
Friends can care, but their closeness makes people edit what they say.
03. Too open-ended to feel held
Anonymous spaces let people vent, but what comes back is unpredictable.
04. Too one-sided to feel shared
AI and support tools can respond, but they cannot say, “I lived that too.”
How might we…
give people a place to say it,
and let them discover they were never as alone as they thought?
RESEARCH
No Existing Platform Owns This Space
We found tools for posting, chatting, therapy, and AI support. But none were built for both parts of the moment: saying what you actually felt, and receiving something that makes it feel less alone.
INSIGHT
The Power of a Human Story
Every platform is built around being heard. But the moment you share something, it stops being just yours. People react, judge, remember. So feelings get edited. They become softer, safer, easier to tell. The part that mattered most often never gets said.
That’s when we shifted direction. We stopped asking how to make people speak louder, and started asking a different question: what if people didn’t need another reaction, but a story that answered the feeling?
An elderly man describes what it was like to survive a war. You weren’t there. You’ll never fully understand what he lived through. And yet something moves in you anyway. That is the power of a human story. It can make you feel something for a life you never lived. Now imagine that story was not only moving, but familiar. Somewhere in the world, a stranger lived through something like yours and carried the same feeling underneath it. Just knowing that exists is enough.
IDEATION
Designing for That Moment
If simply knowing that someone like that existed was enough, the product had to lead people directly to that moment. So we built the smallest possible interaction around it. Someone shares a story. Somewhere else, a stranger who lived through something similar shares theirs in return.
We called that moment Echo.
SOLUTION & CORE FEATURES
01. WHISPER
0. Onboarding
Before anything else, Whisper makes three quiet promises: a place to say it, someone who understands, and the safety to do both. Trust is built before the first interaction, not after.
01. Starting the conversation
Whisper helps users begin without pressure. Instead of asking them to explain everything at once, it offers gentle prompts and responds with acknowledgment only.
Four starter prompts reduce emotional friction
No advice or reframing in the first response
Sharing is optional, never assumed. Users can tag their own emotion, or let Whisper decide if naming it feels like too much
02. ECHO
01. Finding your echo
Once a whisper is sent, Whisper matches it to a real story from a stranger who felt the same.
No profiles, no identity. Just the story
If the first echo doesn't land, there's a next one
When one does, the user saves it to revisit alone
03. BEYOND THE ECHO
01. Explore - The Whisper Map
Every whisper sent out becomes part of this map. At a glance, the emotional landscape of strangers around the world.
Emotion planets sized by whisper volume
Tap a planet to read stories from strangers who felt the same; keep browsing with see nex
tNo profiles, just the words
02. Profile - Whispers, Echos, and Insights
Your whispers and saved echoes, all in one place. Insights turns your emotional history into something you can actually see.
Each card surfaces a one-line preview; tap to read the full story
Insights maps every whisper onto a calendar, each day colored by what you felt
Reflect surfaces a prompt only when the AI notices a real pattern. Not a notification. A question, when there's actually something to ask
DESIGN DECISIONS
What I Changed, and Why
01. No profiles. No nicknames. Just the story.
The original design included profiles, nicknames, and a follow system. The idea was that if someone connected with another person's writing, they could follow them and revisit more of their whispers. However, even with follower counts hidden, the structure still made users aware that someone could keep reading what they wrote. Once a whisper is attached to any visible identity, even an anonymous one, people begin to curate. So we removed everything that could turn sharing into performance. No profiles. No nicknames. No feeds. Just the story, the emotion, and the moment it was written.
before
after
02. Users share in their own words. Nothing rewritten by AI
The original flow had Whisper listen to voice recordings, summarize them, and remove anything identifiable before publishing.It seemed helpful, but a summarized story is no longer fully yours. The rawness, the specific wording, and the way someone actually said it are what make an echo land. So we stopped rewriting. AI can help protect privacy, but the story stays in the user’s own words. What goes out is theirs to decide.
before
after
03. The conversation starts the moment you open the app
The original home screen asked users to choose how they wanted to begin: speak, write, or show. The intention was flexibility, but for someone who can’t quite name what they’re feeling yet, choosing a format became another barrier. So we removed the mode selection from the entry point. The conversation opens immediately, and voice, photo, and text stay available inside the input bar whenever the user needs them.
before
after
NEXT STEP
How Whisper Could Grow in V2
01. Add multilingual translation
Whispers could be automatically translated while preserving tone and emotion, allowing users to connect with stories from people around the world regardless of language.
02. Add content moderation
Full anonymity creates risk. The next version needs AI filtering for harmful content, a report button, and keyword detection that connects users in crisis to the right resources.
03. Add quiet mode / listening mode
Some days you need to vent without any response. Other days you need to feel heard. A simple toggle that lets users choose the kind of presence Whisper offers.
04. Add story mode
Some thoughts don't need a conversation. Story Mode would provide a dedicated writing space where users can write a complete story freely, then choose whether to share it or keep it private.
REFLECTION
The Question That Changed Everything
Whisper started as a simple idea: a safe space to say what you can't say anywhere else. But halfway through, a question stopped everything: how is this different from a notes app? A character that listens. A space that feels safe. A place to let things out. Those all felt valuable. But they still weren't enough to bring someone back.
That question pushed the design further. If people already had places to write things down, and endless stories to read online, what was missing? I realized the value couldn't just be in expression. It had to be in what came back. Echo became the answer: a stranger’s story from someone who had lived through something similar and felt the same underneath it. Building this taught me that empathy gets you to the problem. But you need to keep asking, "Why would someone actually use this?" to get to the solution.
The original 24-hour hackathon submission is available here:
