Be

Be app icon — a serif Be on a green and lilac gradient

Be

Be was my final semester graduation project at George Brown College. An iOS AR app that turns your breath into something you can see. Place a 3D flower in your space, breathe with it, and watch your exhale release its petals.

Timeline

Jan-Apr 2026

Role

Designer & Engineer

Type

Course Project

Collaborators

N/A

The context

Problem

Solution

Iteration

Architectural blueprint

Visual language

My workflow

Exhibition

Takeaway

The Context

Reimagining breathing practice for a wandering mind

I designed and built a breathing experience that listens to your real breath and turns it into something you can see, so a drifting mind always has a way back.

0→1

End-to-End Design and Build

iOS Development

0→1

End-to-End Design and Build

iOS Development

Problem

I saw an opportunity to help people stay mindful during breathing exercises, and come back to them consistently enough to feel the long-term benefits.

Solution

Be turns your breath into a controller. Real-time biofeedback keeps you present, and every session plants a tile in a monthly garden. No streaks to break: a fresh garden each month, with past months saved to look back on.

Be Present, Calm, Still

Be You

Be Present, Calm, Still

Be You

01-Onboarding

A calm, quick way in

Onboarding gets you to your first breath fast. Sign in with Apple takes one tap, a guided breath sets the mood, and two screens explain the rest: the idea behind the name, then how the app works.

Be onboarding — the Be Present welcome screen

Be onboarding — Blow. Watch. Feel., explaining the camera and breath interaction

Blowing is the one interaction the app depends on, so the picture does the explaining for anyone who skips the text.

02-Breathing session

Your breath is the input

The session turns breathing into something you can see and feel. Following the extended exhale method, a 4-second inhale and 6-second exhale, the flower blooms as you breathe in and sheds petals as you blow out. A sine wave and haptic taps keep the pace, and AR lets you place the flower on any surface around you.

03-Digital garden

Where your breaths go

Habit apps often lean on streaks, but a broken streak can turn one missed day into quitting. Be. uses a monthly garden instead. After your first session each day, you plant your flower as a tile, and each month starts fresh, so there’s always a reason to come back and never a streak to lose.

Iteration

Prototype 1: box breathing

My first idea was box breathing: inhale, hold, exhale, hold, four seconds each. To test the core interaction quickly, I built only that part in Unity: a ball moving inside a square, where you rotate the phone to move to the next phase.

Friction for testers, and for me!

From testers: Only 1 of 5 finished a session. Breathing and rotating at the same time was confusing, and they said it was too much work.
From building: Every test meant going from Unity to Xcode to my phone. That loop slowed down every change.

Prototype 2: the flower

So I looked for an interaction that is part of the breath, not added on top of it, and landed on a flower. I switched to Xcode and Swift, which were new to me, and built a rough version in a week. You place a flower in AR, and a timer guides each inhale and exhale. When you blow into the mic, the flower disappears, and it returns as you inhale. All 5 testers finished the session.

Box breathing prototype in AR — the Inhale phase, with a sketched flower drawn over a desk

Box breathing prototype in AR — the Exhale phase, with the flower faded back into the room

Architectural blueprint

With the core interaction working, I mapped out the whole app. from signing in to planting the flower. Each step lists what triggers it, what happens and what the user sees.

The visual language

Soft shapes and gentle colors make the app feel like a place to pause, not to perform. I modeled, drew and designed every piece myself.

Visual language 01 — the 3D flower, modelled in Maya and animated in RealityKit

Visual language 02 — hand-drawn botanical linework tying the body to the flower

Visual language 03 — garden tiles in four seasonal tones: spring, summer, autumn and winter

My workflow

I sketched and designed each screen in Figma, then built a PRD with Claude Code in Antigravity to define the features before writing any code. GitHub handled version control. Xcode can’t preview AR, so every build went from Xcode to my iPhone for testing.

Sketch + Design

PRD + Build

Version Control

Test on iPhone

Exhibition

Out of the test room, into a crowd

I showed Be. over two days at George Brown’s YES! Year-End Show and used it as a chance to watch strangers try it. 10 to 20 people tried it at my booth. Most people completed the breathing session, some with a little help. Visitors were positive, and many suggested ideas for new interactions.

Be setup at YES!26 — poster, promo video, working iPad demo

Takeaway

Building Be with AI changed how I design. I could test an idea on my own phone within days, so the first version failed fast and the second one reached testers a week later. Designing and building stopped feeling like two separate jobs.

What's next for Be?