SitMeDown
SitMeDown
In May 2026, I joined a 4-hour design sprint at Vancouver Web Summit to tackle a problem hiding in plain sight: convention fatigue. Working alongside one other UX designer under tight time constraints, I helped shape SitMeDown — a mobile app that helps over-stimulated attendees find quiet places to sit and reset. We focused on radical simplicity, treating rest as a real product feature rather than an afterthought, and delivered a working prototype with a calm, considered visual language built around a single question: what does an app feel like when it's actually trying to help you slow down?
Project Type
Vibecoding
Time
May 11 2026
Team
2 UX Designers
Focus
Event Planning
Find a Seat
The fastest path to sitting down.
The hero of the entire app: a single, oversized tile that does one thing well. Tap it, get the nearest open seat within 90 seconds. We made it dominant on purpose — when you're physically drained, decision-making is the first thing to go, so the primary action shouldn't require a choice. The soft teal-to-blue gradient and slow breathing animation give the eye somewhere calm to rest while the rest of the screen quiets down around it.
Vibe Map
The room's energy, at a glance.
Not a map of where things are — a map of how things feel. The Vibe Map overlays the convention floor with live atmospheric data: noise level, crowd density, lighting, and the collective energy of nearby attendees. We designed it for the moment you're standing in a hallway deciding whether to walk into a room. Topographic line work and a muted mint palette frame the data as something to read like weather, not analyze like a dashboard.
Wild Chair
For the seat-hunters who go off-map.
The community layer of SitMeDown — a feed of the rarest, weirdest, most ingenious seating discoveries made by the most dedicated users (affectionately, Sit-Maniacs). A planter's edge that's perfect for laptops. A staircase landing nobody noticed. A genuinely comfortable bench someone built with three folding chairs and a coat. Wild Chair turns rest into a small game with a soft competitive layer, surfacing the people who treat finding a seat as a creative pursuit.
Sitting Profile
A quiet record of how often you've rested.
The profile reframes a familiar pattern. Most apps count what you've done — sessions attended, connections made, links clicked. SitMeDown counts what you've recovered from. Points accumulate for finding seats, sharing spots, and helping fellow Sit-Maniacs, unlocking tiers that feel less like status and more like a soft acknowledgment. The avatar tile sits in the top right with a small notification dot — present, but never urgent. We deliberately kept the gamification subtle: a portfolio of restorative moments, not a leaderboard.