Eleara

Ear device, app, and a hold-to-SOS

72 hours, four people, one product

I was product manager and process lead. I did not pick the concept. I set the agendas, ran ideation, delegated by strength, and made the schedule calls when time slipped.

Hidden signals, not surface metrics

Two concepts survived: a Smart Sole for gait, and an ear device using galvanic vestibular stimulation. The Ear Thing won. Willow named the mechanic: GVS sends a tiny current to the vestibular nerve so standing-up dizziness reads as steadiness.

Write the product before Figma

In a 72-hour sprint, a PRD is the only way four people do not build four products. I locked the problem, the solution, four features, and accessibility before anyone opened a frame.

One question after login

I led the user flow. After login the product asks one thing: are you having an episode now? Yes goes to an alert and optional emergency services. Home keeps a persistent Emergency Button for override.

Daily use is Profile, Contacts, and Dashboard. Mapping that first meant nobody designed a screen without a place in the system.

Structure first, color later

I roughed login, home, dashboard, profile, and contacts in grayscale so hierarchy and the two-column cards could settle before style.

A system four people could share

I built the style guide next to the wireframes so screens would not drift. Poppins for headings and data. Inter for body text you can still read during an episode.

Soft periwinkle, dusty blue, warm amber, deep teal. Clinical enough to trust, not cold enough to scare.

Prompt the PRD, then synthesize

My job shifted to feedback. I reviewed screens as they landed and aligned the team before hour-36 testing.

Hour 36, two people, think-aloud

We tested with Tamiko R. and Thania R. Tamiko liked the home status colors but could not scan dashboard cards that all looked the same. She also wanted the app to suggest hydration if dehydration triggers her episodes, not just chart them.

Thania called the interface simple in the best way. Both confirmed the structure. The problems were refinement, which is what you want to hear at hour 36.

Six changes before the last night

We softened the palette so it felt like a companion. We added onboarding we had skipped. We changed SOS to hold-to-trigger so a pocket press would not call help in public.

We made the episode alert look unlike monitoring. We renamed medical records to clinical documents. We gave dashboard cards distinct identities after Tamiko's scan test.

Apply the list, then submit