Case 04 · Nurii Brain longevity · iOS app + web · 0→1

Turning decades of brain-health evidence into a daily ritual.

Nurii is a brain longevity and wellness intelligence product - built to sit at the intersection of science and soul. I founded it and designed it end to end: brand, system, product and content, from idea to build.

Drop the Nurii hero - app home or brand shot
Nurii brain longevity
Role Founder · product & design
Timeline 2024 - present
Scope iOS companion app + web
Status In build · solo
Visit nurii.co
8
longevity pillars
60+
daily rituals
1
design system, end to end
0→1
solo, idea to build
01 - Context
The why behind the work.

Brain longevity is having a moment. The tools for it are not.

Most of what exists is either a clinical dashboard built for researchers, or a wellness app built on pastel and dopamine. Neither really respects the person using it - one overwhelms, the other patronises.

Nurii started from a simpler premise: we don’t have a cure, but we have decades of evidence about what slows cognitive decline. The product’s only job is to turn that evidence into something you’ll actually do - every day, without it nagging you.

02 - The problem

Two voices that usually cancel each other out.

The hard part wasn’t the science or the screens - it was holding rigour and warmth in the same product without one killing the other.

Rigorous

Measurement that means something

Baselines, drift, signal - the quiet language of a clinical notebook. Numbers should feel meaningful, never like a game score.

Warm

A product in service of a person

Hands, breath, plants, sunlight. Embodied and restful - built for a human being, not for a dashboard.

The discipline

Measure, then leave you alone

Notice the dip on Thursdays - don’t shame the streak. Attention without anxiety is the whole brand promise.

03 - My role

One person, the whole stack.

I’m the founder. Nurii is concept to creation - the brand and name, the product strategy, the eight-pillar model, the design system, sixty-plus rituals of original written content, the iOS companion app and the marketing site. Idea to shipping code, owned by one person.

What I owned
Brand & naming Product strategy Information architecture Design system Content - 60+ rituals Companion app UI Marketing site Front-end build
Team
Solo founder & designer
Disciplines
Brand · product · system · build
Surfaces
iOS app · marketing site
Tools
Figma · self-built design system · code
04 - Process

Wide first, then narrow - evidence to interface.

01 Discover

Eight domains of evidence

Literature review Domain mapping User personas Behaviour-change research

I went wide first - a review across the cognitive-longevity research, grouped into the things a person can actually influence: sleep, stress, breath, movement, nutrition, connection, neuroplasticity, journaling. Alongside it I built the people: who is ready to act before symptoms appear, and what they need. That review became the eight pillars the entire product is organised around.

User personas
User personas - the people Nurii is built for, and the question they share.
02 Define

From evidence to architecture

IA & sitemap MVP scoping Content model System foundations

The eight pillars gave structure. I defined the MVP architecture - a data-rich onboarding that gives the AI enough signal to personalise from day one, then depth across the pillars as engagement grows. Then the system itself: Lora and Carlito, sage and copper, one italic phrase of emphasis per heading.

MVP sitemap
MVP sitemap - pre-auth, onboarding and the authenticated app, with an AI layer running underneath.
03 Design

Science, with a soul

User flows UI design Prototyping Marketing site

The interface had to hold both voices at once. I mapped the end-to-end flow - entry, onboarding, the AI building a baseline, then predictive prompts timed before the dip, not after. Mono numerals and hairline rules carry the measurement; warm vellum, a literary serif and real photography carry everything human.

End-to-end user flow
User flow - Sarah’s journey from family-history motivation to a personalised, cycle-aware coaching loop.
05 - Key decisions

The choices that gave Nurii its spine.

A few decisions did most of the work. Each one trades breadth for a product you can hold in your head.

01

Eight pillars, not infinite features

A bounded model you can hold in your head beats an endless feature list. Everything maps back to the eight.

02

Sage by default, copper rarely

One calm workhorse colour does the work; the warm one stays precious by appearing almost never.

03

One italic phrase per heading

The single rule for emphasis. Colour lives in the type, never in decoration or a coloured box.

04

Mono numerals for every metric

Data reads as data. Measurement should feel meaningful and exact - never gamified.

05

No streaks, no shame

The app measures what matters, then leaves you alone. Missing a day is information, not failure.

06

Real photography, warmly graded

Hands, skin, plants and light - never glowing-brain renders or abstract gradient blobs.

Tried

A home screen full of scores - a cockpit of metrics, charts and rings.

Chose

A single breath score, and a lot of silence around it.

Why →

More numbers meant more anxiety. The brand promise is restful attention, not a control panel.

Tried

Soft wellness pastels and rounded everything - the category default.

Chose

Literary publishing meets a clinical notebook: high-contrast serif, mono data.

Why →

Pastel reads as unserious. The serif-and-mono pairing earns trust without going cold or clinical.

Reading one screen - the daily home
Drop a Nurii app screen to annotate 1 2 3 4
1
Italic emphasis, not a coloured box

One phrase per heading carries the accent - the brand’s single rule for colour in type.

2
Mono numerals

Every metric is set in JetBrains Mono so data always reads as data.

3
Sage chip for the active pillar

Low-attention, restful - the calm workhorse colour doing quiet work.

4
Generous whitespace

The screen is allowed to breathe. Un-crowded is a feature, not an accident.

06 - Craft & system

The system that holds it all together.

Because the brand lives or dies on consistency, I built the design system as a first-class artefact - not a clean-up job at the end. Here it is in its own voice.

Nurii design system science · soul
Eight pillars. One brain.
Lora · display serif

We measure what matters, then leave you alone. A small ritual, repeated - noticed, never gamified.

Carlito · text · JetBrains Mono · data
Paper
#FBF9F2
Warm vellum canvas
Ink
#0F1411
Primary text, never black
Sage
#5C7A52
Primary · functional
Copper
#A85528
Editorial · rare
Ochre
#E2B779
Quiet highlight
Eight pillar glyphs · 1.5px stroke · sage
Breathwork
Stress
Sleep
Neuroplasticity
Nutrition
Journaling
Connections
Movement
App screen / craft detail
App screen / craft detail
App screen / craft detail
07 - Outcome & impact

A whole product, from zero - by one person.

Nurii today is a complete brand, a working design system, sixty-plus rituals of original content, an iOS companion-app prototype and a live marketing site at nurii.co - defined, designed and largely built end to end. It’s the clearest proof of the thing I value most: turning a vague, ambitious idea into something real and coherent.

What I'm carrying forward

Owning the full stack as a designer-founder changes how I design for everyone else - I feel every downstream consequence of a decision, from brand promise to shipped code. That’s the perspective I bring back to the teams I lead.

8
pillars - the model the whole product runs on
60+
rituals written, structured and designed
1
cohesive design system, built as a first-class artefact
Live
marketing site shipped at nurii.co
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