Drawing of Sumin encircled.

Sumin Hyun

Align

Reimagined social connection by designing a system that makes repeated real-world encounters visible

Hackathon
Interactive Prototyping
UX Design
A dark navy blue background with dots littering it to mimic a starry night. The align logo is in the middle of the image, with the wordmark below it and the tagline "If the stars align, we will meet again" below that.

OVERVIEW

Over the course of our lives, we cross paths with nearly 80,000 people many of whom remain familiar strangers. In fast moving daily environments, moments of recognition and potential connection often go unnoticed and unacted upon.

Align is a speculative tool that transforms these subtle social signals into a measurable experience. It introduces a score that quantifies how often and how long two people share physical space, making invisible patterns of familiarity visible and actionable to support meaningful, real-world connections.

Team

  • 4 Designers

My Role

  • Designer

Timeline

  • 72 Hours

Tools

  • Figma
  • Figma Make
  • Video Editing

The Challenge

Design a speculative tool that can track, measure, and visualize an aspect of human sensory experience that is currently intangible or unmeasurable. The solution must also allow users to detect, enhance, or manipulate this sensory input to support a specific wellness goal or behavior change.

The Problem

How might we make these invisible patterns of social familiarity visible so users can recognize and act on potential connections?

The Goal

Design a tool that makes social familiarity visible and measurable. By introducing a new signal of connection, the goal is to help users recognize repeated encounters and turn them into meaningful, real-world relationships.

BRAINSTORMING

Day 1: Where do we start?

Given the time constraints of the hackathon, we started by quickly generating ideas as a group after reviewing the prompt.

We shared our concepts, then narrowed them down by identifying common themes.

SAFETYFAMILIARITYCONNECTIONSOULMATEAWARENESSCOLORSOCIALSOUNDEMOTIONDREAMSIMAGINATIONTIMEOVERSTIMULATIONMENTAL HEALTHMEMORY

Narrowing it down

We then moved into refining our ideas by defining the specific sensory experience we wanted to measure.

Each team member identified 2 of their strongest concepts, and we collaboratively combined overlapping ideas to form a more focused direction.

Social Echolocationtlee479
bday msgjolinetran
what to eat w friendsjolinetran
social battery "sense of social energy" or "interpersonal energy awareness" Skylar Fountain
reminiscing (location, dream, memories)Sumin
Dream "subconscious emotional awareness" or "dream aftereffect perception"
  • tracking and visualizing an internal sensory experience: the emotional residue left by dreams
Skylar Fountain
red string theory will i ever see this person again
  • "sense of destined connection" or "future connection awareness"
Sumin

DEFINE

Defining the new sense

We chose to explore a new form of perception: the ability to sense social connection through patterns of shared space and repeated encounters.

This sense is defined through three key components which informed the key features, translating abstract social signals into actionable interactions:

Familiarity

Recognizing people we repeatedly see in everyday places

Map View

Visualizes repeated encounters

Serendipity

Understand when repeated encounters might not be random but instead reflect similar lifestyles

Connection Prompts

Highlights meaningful moments to engage

Pattern recognition

Identifying routines and shared behaviors with others

Astral Score

Quantifies shared time and patterns

Target Audience

Many Gen Z and young millennials (age 18-30) naturally look for connection in environments where they regularly encounter new faces but share similar experiences:

  • Students on large college campuses
  • Young professionals who recently moved to a new city
  • People with consistent routines
  • Individuals who want to expand their social circles beyond existing friend networks

FINAL PROTOTYPE

Constallation pattern small logo

THE CONSTELLATION MAP

PATHS AND ENCOUNTERS

See your own path you took through the day and the people you’ve encountered visually see where you’ve encountered someone

A legend describing how to read the map view gif presented.A gif that illustrates the map view on an iPhone screen, recorded in figma.An example of a location on the map view, the Downtown Yoga Studio, showing that the user crossed paths with someone here 4 times this week, and their profile is displayed below the location information.

DISCOVER

ASTRAL SCORE

See how your astral score was formed and choose to start a conversation or remove the recommendation

A legend describing how to read the map view gif presented.A legend describing how to read the map view gif presented.

MESSAGE

STARLINKS AND NEW STARLINKS

A gif that illustrates the map view on an iPhone screen, recorded in figma.

See all the users you’ve formed starlinks with and ones you may form starlinks with or not

Choose to respond to the given prompt to form a connection

Once both users respond, a starlink is formed

Safety Concerns

  • Users remain anonymous until both people mutually accept a connection
  • Align does not reveal exact real-time locations. Instead, it only shows shared encounter locations after multiple interactions
  • Users must mutually match before messaging. The conversation begins with an AI-generated prompt based on places both users frequently visit, and both users must answer the prompt before the chat unlocks

DEMO VIDEO

Align - FigBuild 2026