Grumble - Know your hunger before your body has to scream for it.
Designing a speculative hunger-sensing tool that makes an invisible body signal visible, social, and actionable.
Role
Visual & Motion Design
Timeline
4 days
March 2026
Team
Catherine Jia
Sabrina Chen
Shuang Liang
Leveraged Skills
Visual interface design
Micro-animation motion
Motion design
Overview
Reimagining hunger as a sense you can finally see.
FigBuild 2026 gave us one prompt: design a tool that tracks something intangible about the human sensory experience. Our team had 4 days to design a speculative tool that tracks something intangible about human sensory experience.
We chose hunger. Hunger is one of the most universal human experiences — and one of the least understood. We feel it vaguely, react to it too late, and almost never treat it as data.
Goal
4 signals
Hunger states mapped to a visual color system
5 flows
Core scenarios designed end-to-end in 4 days
1 new sense
Hunger — made visible for the first time
JUMP TO PROTOTYPE
VIEW DEV POST SUBMISSION
The Current Space
We eat every day, but hunger remains one of the least understood senses of human.
From nutritional science and behavioral research, three reasons why hunger stays invisible...
Adults aged 18–34 have the highest rate of meal skipping of any age group, at 38%.
Across multiple studies, time pressure is ranked as the single strongest reason people cite for skipping meals PubMed Central — not a lack of food, but a failure to notice hunger until it's too late to act on it.
The Solution
Introducing Grumble
Grumble tracks your blood glucose-derived hunger index in real time — and turns a private body signal into a shared, social experience.
Core Flows
01 A friend noticed you were hungry, before you did
A friend's hunger check-in lands on your lock screen before you've even thought about food. Not an alarm — a nudge from someone who cares.
02 Tell your hunger what it wants
Type what you're craving and Grumble finds it nearby. Your craving isn't just an order — it's an open invitation.
03 See who nearby is hungry for the same thing
Your hunger index appears on a live map alongside your friends'. Matching hunger levels surface the opportunity to eat together before the moment passes.
04 View friends hunger status and remind them to eat
Spot a friend deep in the red and send them a virtual feed. It lands as a real notification — playful, warm, impossible to ignore.
05 Understand what your hunger has been trying to tell you
Your personal hunger profile shows patterns across days and weeks — so you can anticipate the next crash before it happens.
AFTER GRUMBLE…
When we finally listen to hunger, we don't just feed ourselves — we show up for each other.
Visualizing Appetite: A Color-Coded Semantic System
My teammate and I analyzed brand visual guidelines and mood boards to bridge the gap between LA’s "cinematic energy" and the Metro’s "rigid" reality.
Visualizing hunger data through clock metaphor
Daily view: Identify the exact moment of hunger to plan meals.
Utilizing a 24-hour circular dial to mirror the natural circadian rhythm. The radial heatmap provides an intuitive "clock-look" that maps body signals to specific times of day
Weekly view: Compare fluctuations and identify anomalies across the week
Unfolding the circular clock into vertical time-strips. This linear alignment allows for side-by-side comparison, making it easy to spot if hunger peaks shifted
our project pitch deck
Check out our slide presentation
My Takeaways
What I learned from my first Fig Build competition…
Think beyond conventional patterns and explore creative interactions
FigBuild taught me to push past expected solutions and consider more imaginative interaction patterns that solve problems in a memorable and intuitive way.
Balance vision with execution by leaving enough time to build
I learned that strong ideas need enough time for both vibe coding and mocking, so the concept can actually come to life instead of staying at the idea stage.
Storytelling and time management are just as important as the final design
A compelling project is not only about what you build, but also how clearly you tell the story behind it and how well you manage your time to bring the idea together.
What we want
We believe hunger is more than a sensory. It's a signal, a conversation, and an invitation.
Ideation
How might we remind people to eat according to their body's hunger signals — and make it easier to notice, understand, and act on?
Back
Let’s stay in touch
Resume
My resume.pdf