Presense: Are you truly in the moment?
Inspiration
The inspiration came from a small but striking moment during our discussion.
One of us shared how she once walked to the wrong floor of her building and knocked on someone else’s door without realising it. She only noticed after the door opened that she had been completely on autopilot.
It sounded funny at first but it made us pause.
How often do we move through our day like this without really being there?
We started noticing similar moments in daily life.
- Eating a meal but barely tasting it
- Reading a full page but understanding none of it
- Talking to someone and suddenly realising we missed what they said
These are small moments but they reveal something deeper.
Our mind drifts away from the present and we often realise it only after the moment has already passed.
That curiosity became the starting point of this project.
What it does
Presence Sense explores the idea of making attention visible.
The system detects when a person’s attention drifts away from the present moment and gently reminds them to come back.
Instead of forcing focus it simply creates awareness.
Core Concept
At the centre of the system is the Presence Compass.
It shows where attention currently resides across four territories of the mind:
- Past memory
- Future planning
- Internal thought
- External disturbance
A moving point on the compass reflects where attention is at that moment.
When the point drifts away from the present the system sends a subtle signal through:
- Sound
- Visuals
- Touch
The cue is not an interruption.
It is simply a moment of awareness that allows the user to return.
The goal is not productivity.
The goal is helping people experience the moments they are already living.
How we built it
Our process began by trying to understand the behaviour itself.
We spoke with people about moments when they realised they were not fully present.
Almost everyone had experienced this in different ways:
- Some missed parts of conversations
- Some finished meals without noticing the taste
- Others felt their entire day had passed without clear memories
This helped us recognize that:
The problem was not distraction alone.
The real issue was the lack of awareness when attention drifts.
Visual Exploration
From there we explored ways to represent attention visually.
Attention constantly moves between:
- Thoughts about the past
- Thoughts about the future
- Internal reflections
- External stimuli
We needed a way to show this movement in a way people could immediately understand.
That is where the compass idea emerged.
A compass naturally shows direction and movement.
Using that analogy allowed us to map attention as something that travels across different directions of the mind.
Once the core idea was clear we built everyday scenarios around it:
- Meetings
- Meals
- Commuting
These helped us understand how the system would gently guide a person back to the present moment.
Challenges
The biggest challenge was defining the problem clearly.
At the start the topic felt extremely broad.
Many themes were connected:
- Sensory experience
- Attention
- Memory
- Awareness
It took time to identify the exact space we wanted to address.
Another challenge was ideation.
We were careful not to create just another focus tool.
We kept questioning whether each idea actually solved the deeper issue we had identified.
This meant:
- Rejecting many early concepts
- Spending more time with the problem itself
The process was slower than expected but it helped us arrive at an idea that felt meaningful and intentional rather than convenient.
Accomplishments
One of the most important outcomes of this project was identifying a problem that people experience often but rarely recognise or articulate.
Many people feel that their days pass quickly and become difficult to remember.
Through this project we connected that feeling to:
The fading of sensory experience when attention drifts away from the moment.
Another accomplishment was translating this invisible mental process into something people can understand.
The compass analogy helped us turn the movement of attention into a clear and intuitive visual system.
It allowed us to communicate a complex idea in a way that feels:
- Familiar
- Clear
- Relatable
What we learned
This project taught us the importance of staying with a problem long enough to truly understand it.
We learned to keep asking questions even when they seemed simple at first.
Those questions often led to deeper insights.
We also learned that strong ideas take time.
Many concepts looked interesting initially but did not truly address the problem.
Taking the time to challenge and refine our thinking helped us arrive at a solution that felt purposeful.
What’s next for Presense
The next step for Presence would be understanding how people respond to awareness of their own attention.
Testing the concept with users could reveal:
- How people interpret these signals
- Whether they feel supported rather than interrupted
Another important direction is exploring situations where attention drifting is actually beneficial such as:
- Creative thinking
- Reflection
- Relaxation
Developing the system further would mean refining how it distinguishes between:
- Intentional shifts of attention
- Unnoticed drift
This would allow the system to respect natural thinking while still helping people reconnect with the present moment.
Built With
- antigravity
- claude
- design
- figma
- make
- veo
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