At HealthHack 2025, our team tackled a challenge we'd all experienced: health apps that show you numbers without helping you understand them. My role was to reimagine how a personal health dashboard could tell stories with data instead of just displaying metrics.
Understanding the challenge
Health dashboards suffer from the "more data, more confusion" trap. Existing solutions show heart rate, sleep, steps, and nutrition as isolated metrics. Users told us they felt overwhelmed and couldn't connect the dots between their habits and how they felt. The problem: data without narrative.
How I got there
Speed-interviewed 6 hackathon attendees about their health tracking frustrations in the first 2 hours. Common thread: "I see the numbers but don't know what to do with them."
Sketched 15+ layout concepts in 30 minutes, then dot-voted with the team. We gravitated toward a narrative-first approach inspired by news article layouts rather than traditional dashboards.
Built a design system in Figma in 4 hours: typography scale, color palette (calming blues and greens, warm accents for attention), component library.
Designed three key views: Daily Story (narrative summary), Connections (showing correlations between habits), and Deep Dive (detailed data for the curious).
Add a caption describing this image — wireframes, research wall, sketches, etc.
What I designed
Instead of a grid of widgets, the dashboard opens with a "Daily Story" — a written narrative generated from your data: "You slept 40 minutes more than usual, and your resting heart rate dropped. On days like this, you tend to rate your energy higher." Scrolling reveals visual connections between metrics, with interactive elements that let you explore correlations at your own pace.
Results & reflections
Our team won "Best Design" at the hackathon. Judges highlighted the narrative approach as a genuine innovation in health data presentation. The "Daily Story" concept resonated most — one judge called it "the weather forecast for your body."
Key takeaway
Working under extreme time constraints taught me to trust my instincts and commit to a direction quickly. The 48-hour limit was actually freeing — there was no time for second-guessing, only for doing.
Next project
Redesigning Urban Mobility
A transit companion app that helps newcomers navigate unfamiliar city systems with confidence, not confusion.