How might we design AI to support higher human needs — rather than lower-level desire?
Designing technology that serves our best without exploiting our worst.
My thesis at the Stanford d.school was fortified through prototyping paths forward, culminating in Pumbit — a collaborative effort to serve mothers while asking more of the technology they already rely on.
Agents can serve more than just productivity, and they aren't replacements for human relationships. They're scaffolds for the people we aspire to become — and for the care, friendship, presence, belonging, and growth we'd like to bring with us.
Pumbit.
The first weeks of motherhood concentrate one of the hardest design problems in the world: care must arrive when it can be received, not when it is convenient to give.
Pumbit is an agent with two doors. One door is a quiet table for the mother — she names what she needs without ever having to ask. The other door is a vocabulary of small gestures for her village: a friend, a sister, a mother-in-law, a husband. The agent holds the timing, translates care across the gap, and only opens the door when both sides are ready.
Pumbit was the culminating work of my design program. I chose to build it with Diane Rhim because a partnership let us reach further and go deeper than either of us could have alone.
What if agents could help mothers receive the care needed to flourish through emergence, rather than only avoid pathology?
Honeycomb.
A good host notices when two guests should talk. Then gives them just enough context. Then steps away. Honeycomb does the same. For people and ideas.
We all leave a digital trail. Articles. Highlights. Notes. Our private tools keep them locked away. Two friends spend months circling the same question. Neither knows it.
Honeycomb reads two trails. It finds the overlap. It writes a conversation prompt for both people. Then it leaves.
Not more content. A better opening. Success is a real conversation, not another press of the like button.
Built for Erik Brynjolfsson's Stanford course AI Awakening, May 2026.
Breadcrumbs.
A public e-ink window mounted in a shared building. It surfaces a stranger's recent reading — a quiet trail of titles passing through the hallway.
The screen is slow. The agent is small. Building windows where there were once walls.
Roy_bot.
An agent inside a private Discord that takes the sting out of an unanswered group chat — not letting the chat go silent even when distance or demands keep you away. Roughly 2× more human-to-human chat on the days it shows up.
Snudge.
Or Screen Nudge, if you want its government name.
A coaching agent that triggers ambient signals to push you toward your higher goals. The room itself becomes a signal — the lights pulse red when the body forgets what the mind already chose.