Rise n' Grind
Tools
UI/UX
Branding
Industry
Technology
Year
2025
Description
A MOBILE APP PROTOTYPE THAT TRANSFORMS WAKING UP INTO A SOCIAL AND UNPREDICTABLE EXPERIENCE THAT LET'S USERS SEND AND RECIEVE CUSTOM VOICE MESSAGES FROM FRIENDS AND FAMILY.
ABOUT
The brief was pretty simple, make waking up easier. But after early research, our team of four quickly realized that easier wasn't really the problem, repetition was. Students weren't just struggling to wake up, they were waking up the exact same way every single day, which made the whole experience feel like a loop. The question became: how do you make mornings feel like something worth waking up for? Anyone who dreads their alarm, but specifically students and young people who want their morning routine to feel less robotic and more human are our main audience for this app. The app also serves people who want to stay connected with friends and family in small, everyday ways since waking someone up with your voice is surprisingly intimate. Rise n' Grind is a mobile app that lets users record voice messages to send as alarms to people in their network, and receive them in return. Every morning is different because you never know exactly what you're waking up to. Users can choose who they receive messages from or opt into full randomness, handing over control entirely. The result is a wake-up experience that's personal, playful, and genuinely unpredictable. The full prototype was built in Figma with a complete interaction flow.
ABOUT
The brief was pretty simple, make waking up easier. But after early research, our team of four quickly realized that easier wasn't really the problem, repetition was. Students weren't just struggling to wake up, they were waking up the exact same way every single day, which made the whole experience feel like a loop. The question became: how do you make mornings feel like something worth waking up for? Anyone who dreads their alarm, but specifically students and young people who want their morning routine to feel less robotic and more human are our main audience for this app. The app also serves people who want to stay connected with friends and family in small, everyday ways since waking someone up with your voice is surprisingly intimate. Rise n' Grind is a mobile app that lets users record voice messages to send as alarms to people in their network, and receive them in return. Every morning is different because you never know exactly what you're waking up to. Users can choose who they receive messages from or opt into full randomness, handing over control entirely. The result is a wake-up experience that's personal, playful, and genuinely unpredictable. The full prototype was built in Figma with a complete interaction flow.
We started very broad with the early ideation phase included physical concepts like a fan that blows you awake and an alarm clock that literally runs away from you. Fun ideas, but the student interviews stopped us before we went too far down that road. What kept coming up was the feeling that every day is the same and these repeatable contraptions didn't help prevent that . Any solution that did the exact same thing every morning would eventually become just another loop. That insight reframed the entire project for us. We stopped designing for convenience and started designing for surprise instead with the waking up experience. The voice message concept emerged from that pivot: it's different every day because it comes from a real person, and real people are unpredictable. Assembling the final prototype meant a lot of alignment work to make the screens feel cohesive, but getting all the pieces to connect into a single presentable flow was one of the more satisfying parts of the process and when it came all together to present it was fun to hear our custom voice messages on the screen.
PROCESS & CHALLENGES
FINAL THOUGHTS
The core concept is strong since we figured out that monotony was the real problem, not the alarm itself, is the kind of research-backed reframe that makes a project worth presenting. Where it falls short is depth. Right now the app's entertainment value depends almost entirely on how willing users are to get creative with their voice messages, and that's a fragile foundation since we can’t guarantee continued usage and participation. The next version needs features that encourage engagement regardless of how much effort someone puts in: streaks, friendly challenges between users, and recording prompts for people who don't know what to say. Some layer of gamification would give the app a reason to stay on your phone past the first week. That's the gap between a clever concept and something people actually keep using.
