Hira: Conversational AI Designed to Listen
In collaboration with UPMC’s Gynecologic Oncology department, I led early research and design for Hira. Originally scoped as conversational AI to provide emotional support and symptom guidance, I reframed the product around a deeper need: patients needed help making sense of their experiences and symptoms, but more importantly, they wanted to feel emotionally heard.
Through co-design with patients and clinicians, I discovered that an AI that simply listens — without offering advice — could create a safe, non-judgmental space for expression. I translated this into a “listen, don’t solve” strategy, shaping Hira’s tone, persona, and interaction model to support clarity, emotional processing, and passive symptom capture.
This shift redefined the product’s role in care, improving how patients prepare for and engage in appointments, while aligning with health system goals like reducing miscommunication and improving satisfaction.
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TLDR; While clinical experts know their field deeply, they don’t live the patient experience, so we prioritized ongoing patient feedback throughout our process. We also explored feminist approaches to communication, experimented with grounding haptics and sound, and built some unconventional prototypes to help us better understand and express the emotional depth and humanity we were designing for.
Design Principle 1
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1.Johnson and johnson et al. 2.johnson and johneson and johnson et al.
Physicality prototyping????
Design validation
Solution
Process
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Methodologies
Shadowing
Co-design
Design Details
Conversation designed for female expectations
Haptic & sound design
Building design principles
Research
I observed both patient appointments and charting in-between. I noticed that patients often recalled symptoms or questions after the visit ended, requiring follow-up through email or triage staff.
Through previous conversations with the staff, I knew that patients commonly experienced intense anxiety before appointments and brain-fog during them.
We asked patients to design their ideal virtual caregiver. We learned that they didn’t want advice or solutions, just to be listened to.
“My husband has learned I don’t want solutions, just presence and acknowledgment that this sucks. Our dogs are great support— they never judge and are always there to listen.”
“My friends tell me “It will be okay,” but that only makes me feel misunderstood. Sometimes, I feel like I need to rant into the void and not get answers back.“
Research
Relying on relational anthropomorphic backchannel like "Uh-huhs" or "Mhms" to show listening risks interruption, leading to broken social proxy and trust when engaging in emotionally charged conversations.
We centered using conversational AI that simply listens, but shows presence through consistently positioning recording as the primary action with and visual pulsations while recording.
1 Howell et al., 2018. Emotional Biosensing: Exploring Critical Alternatives 2 Cho et al., 2022. Alexa as an Active Listener
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1.Johnson and johnson et al. 2.johnson and johneson and johnson et al.
Design Principle 2
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1.Johnson and johnson et al. 2.johnson and johneson and johnson et al.
Design Principle 3
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1.Johnson and johnson et al. 2.johnson and johneson and johnson et al.