Vayu वायु

concept

A watch app that taps your wrist when the air turns bad and shows you a cleaner way through, and a phone app for the detail.

role
UX and interaction design
team
Soumik HalderShardul N
when
March 2026
write-up
Devpost
The film we made for the submission: the street, the science, the design language, then the product. Shardul shaped its look. It has sound, and subtitles burned in.

01the problem

You can’t feel bad air.

Bad air is part of the commute in most Indian cities. On a bad day the AQI sits in the hundreds, and a green park and a choked junction can be one street apart.

  1. You can’t feel it. Your breathing speeds up and your heart works harder before you notice anything. You feel it later, as a tired evening.
  2. The numbers don’t help. An AQI of 168 on your phone doesn’t tell you what to do at the next corner.
  3. Maps don’t care. Navigation sends you down the same road whether the air on it is clean or not.
A chart of one 25 minute walk. At a busy junction the air quality jumps. A minute later breathing rate and heart rate rise with it. That is when Vayu would tap your wrist. The walker doesn't notice anything. the junction at rush hour 8:40 8:45 8:50 8:55 9:00 9:05 8:53 · your body reacts Vayu taps your wrist here you notice: later, if at all
One walk to work. The air turns at the junction, and your body follows within a minute. That minute is where Vayu acts.

02the idea

Do for the air what the watch already does for noise.

It came from a feature already on my wrist. Apple Watch’s Noise app listens to the sound around you, and if it stays loud long enough to hurt your hearing, it taps your wrist. No app to open, no number to read.

Nothing like that exists for the air. A watch already has the sensors and the GPS. Add the air at that spot, and it can warn you the same way, then show you a way out.

beforeNoise, today

afterVayu, for the air

Same move, different sense: notice it, tap the wrist, say it in words.

03a walk with vayu

One walk to the office.

From the first glance at 8:40 to the last tap at 9:05. The map is the street; the watch is what you see on your wrist.

8:40. Vayu runs in the background. One score for how you’re breathing, the AQI under it.

8:52. Rush hour at the junction. The AQI climbs, and a minute later so does your breathing.

8:53. A strong tap on the wrist, like Noise in a loud room. The alert says what’s wrong in words.

8:53. The same alert offers routes. The park is cleaner and four minutes longer, and it says so.

8:54. Turn by turn on the wrist, called by taps, so your arm can stay down.

9:05. A soft tap once you’re through. Then it goes quiet again.

04the phone app

The watch decides. The phone is where you look closer.

Shardul designed the first phone app at FigBuild, below. It goes for a retro, bold, unapologetically Indian look: truck-art energy, chunky outlines, big Devanagari. It makes a great poster. It’s hard to live with every day, because every card is loud and the contrast and the hierarchy fight each other.

The first Vayu phone concept: three screens on a cream ground with chunky black outlines and hard offset shadows. Home shows breathing comfort in rani pink, Navigate shows route options on a map in kesar orange, and Profile has a Hindi and Kannada language switch and smartwatch pairing in haldi and jamun.
The first concept, FigBuild 2026. The pigments and the two scripts came from here.

Afterwards I redesigned it on the structure of Apple Health: a Summary, the Routes, the Trends, and a floating dock. The pigments and the two scripts stayed, and the app got the calm of a health app. It runs on the same pigments as the watch.

on the wristthe same moment

Summary. One score for the air, 64 of 100, then the AQI on a single spectrum. Four pollutants sit under it, each against its guide value, and the watch shows the same moment.

Routes. Two ways home, coloured by the air along them. The cleanest is seven minutes longer, the fastest runs through worse air, and each says so.

Trends. The AQI for today: a solid line for what was measured, dotted for what’s modelled ahead, with the peak and the low called out.

05decisions

Most of the work was deciding what not to show.

Each card shows an idea we dropped, redrawn for this page, then what we kept and what it cost. Flip them.

01One glance, one decision.

You look at a watch for a second or two, mid-walk. So the watch detects and acts, and the phone is where you go deeper: charts, history, the full map.

The cost: most of what the app knows never reaches your wrist.

02Never an alert without a way out.

An AQI of 160 doesn’t change what you do. A tap that says your heart has been working hard for six minutes, with a cleaner route four minutes longer, does.

The cost: every alert needs a route, a breathe or a direction ready, which makes alerts harder to design than numbers.

03Show the trade honestly.

The cleanest route can be slower, and the fastest usually runs through the worst air. Each route shows its air and its time side by side, and you choose.

The cost: we can’t promise the healthiest choice is also the easy one.

04No map on the watch.

Maps are dense; health screens are calm. Mid-commute we cut each moment down to one thing: the next turn and the air ahead.

The cost: anyone who wants the full map has to take out their phone.

06four alerts

Four alerts you can tell apart without looking.

Each alert has its own tap. Tap a watch to see it buzz and its rhythm play; on a phone, you’ll feel it too.

07the look

Indian roots, calmed down for daily use.

Shardul built the film and the first phone app on Indian pop art: truck art, old film posters, hand-painted shop signs. Bold colour, high contrast, two scripts on every screen.

After FigBuild I redesigned the watch in Figma Make, then the phone app. I kept the roots and calmed them down for something you look at all day. The pigments are saturated and come in hot and cool pairs, rani with mor, kesar with neel, tied together with sona gold. The air isn’t five blocks of colour but one continuous spectrum. Devanagari runs at full weight beside the Latin, and a modern serif and a lotus for alerts finish it.

  • Mor मोरPrimary, calm
  • Rani रानीAccent, hot pair of mor
  • Kesar केसरSensitive · 101–150
  • Neel नीलNight, cool pair of kesar
  • Neem नीमGood · 0–50
  • Haldi हल्दीModerate · 51–100
  • Sindoor सिंदूरUnhealthy · 151–200
  • Jamun जामुनVery unhealthy · 201–300
  • Manjistha मंजिष्ठाHazardous · 301+
  • Sona सोनाHairlines and rings
Air runs on one continuous spectrum, from neem for good to manjistha for hazardous. The accents come in pairs, and sona ties them together.

08credits

Who did what, and what’s left.

Shardul N
The design language and the story: the bold, Indian-rooted look of the film and the original phone app.
Soumik Halder
The experience: navigation, onboarding, and how it all moves. After FigBuild, the watch redesign and the phone app redesign on this page.

We didn’t build sensors or test this with people in a weekend. What’s here is the thinking, the flows and the screens. Three questions we couldn’t settle:

  1. When should it reroute? A route that starts clean can turn bad three minutes in.
  2. How do you say “turn here” mid-walk without becoming one more buzz to ignore?
  3. When is a small change in the air worth a longer walk?

Next would be profiles for people with asthma or COPD, so alerts match their body rather than an average, and pooled, anonymous readings that map the hotspots official stations miss.

Vayu is a concept from FigBuild 2026. The full submission is on Devpost.