Eating with Chopsticks
Haalo, Fine Motor Skill Assistance Tool
TIMELINE
10 weeks
ROLE
Product Designer
Project Manager/Lead
TEAM
Awards
Red Dot Brands & Communication 2026
TOOLS
Figma
Rhino 3D
Keyshot 11
THE PROBLEM
How can technology help people with nerve damage regain independence in everyday tasks?
People with fine motor skill loss from nerve damage lack a solution built for their independence. Our focus: independence, physical therapy, continuous improvement — a glove that assists fine motor movement while helping users get stronger with every use.
MY ROLE
Project Management, Product Design & Information Architecture
I led the product's direction by defining core goals and identifying key user pain points, then translated those insights into 3D renders of the glove and its inner mechanisms using Rhino 7, informed by user testing. I also shaped the app's information architecture: designing the onboarding, navigation, and training flow to make teaching the exo-glove daily movements simple and intuitive.
CONTEXT
My older brother lost his fine motor skills at a very young age.
While everyone his age would rush out the door after tying their own laces, my brother would sit and wait for me to help him out because he couldn’t do it himself. And that encouraged me and my team to look into a solution that would encourage people with nerve damage to gain their own independence.
INSIGHTS
Current solutions are hard to navigate, non-existent or confusing to use.
We interviewed users with fine-motor challenges (nerve damage, limited finger mobility) alongside unaffected users — comparing natural movement patterns to surface pain points, use cases, and fit requirements.
Hard to Navigate
Complicated Interfaces
Confusing Medical Terms
Ill fitting devices
Impossible to wear all day
No progress or tracking
WE KNEW FROM THEN OUR PRODUCT NEEDED...
An Intuitive Interface
Minimal interactions, easy-to-follow videos, and simple saving so they could focus on learning the task and not the screen.
Button Up Shirt
48% Done
Adaptive Learning
A system that learned and molded itself to each user's unique muscle movements as they trained it to fit their activities.
Current Progress
AI Integration
78%
Restorative Therapy
Built-in physical therapy to manage the chronic pain of nerve damage that comes after attempting the fine motor movements.
SOLUTION
An Assistive Exo-Glove that Enhances Fine Motor Movements
This exo-glove enhances grip and pinch movements as the user attempts them, using AI to amplify nerve signals. A companion app learns the user's motion patterns to refine movement over time, flags where discomfort arises, and suggests ways to reduce it.
App
Glove
Haalo
AI Module
THE APP
Personalized Fit
Constant Task Refinement
Record your daily tasks so the AI can adapt to your patterns, saved in a library you can revisit anytime you need it next.
Physical Therapy
Guided hand exercises to help reduce pain from nerve damage, build comfort, and prevent overuse over time.
THE GLOVE
EMG Sensors
Electro Magnetic Sensors read muscle activity and identified which nerves were engaged to help understand the action being done.
AI Module
The AI module, based on prosthetic AI, amplifies the EMG signals into stronger, supported movements of the action.
Button Up Shirt
2 min
Button Up Shirt
2 min
Increase AI adaption by completing tasks
10%
Current Progress
AI Integration
IPMC Actuators
Ionic Polymer-Metal actuators are placed along the glove to mimic muscle motion to complete fine motor movements
Catered to you, your own personal fit.
After through research, it was best suited and observed that the glove would only be given to a user in need by a medical professional so the glove would be assesed and fit to their needs after a medial examination and then delivered to them with appopriate instructions.
THE AI MODULE
This module is based on prosthetics technology. The AI helps record fine motor skill movements to train the gloves sensors into mimicking actual movement based on the user's mobility range.
Haalo
Improving it Your Way
Low Effort
Basic
For users who prefer casual testing
4-6+ Weeks
1-2 tasks/day
Slower adaption
High Effort
Intensive
For users who prefer fast results
1-2 Weeks
6-8 tasks/day
Quick & Full adaption
Keeping Track
The app has an emergency stop if need be to understand how to improve and work through any obstacles that come up.
TESTING / ITERATING
Final Design
Site Map
The Haalo app is structured around three core features — Home, Task Library, Physical Therapy — mapping the full user journey from calibration of the glove to easy daily use when needed for the task. From this structure, we moved into low-fidelity wireframes to define the layout and flow of each screen.
Our Content begin to sound too medical.
We made sure the app's content felt informational and friendly rather than technical, prioritizing clear guidance above everything else.
Before
After
Some of our designs didn't give enough context
We replaced our hand-drawn illustrations with videos to give users more context on how each movement should be performed. Users preferred this format — it gave them a clearer sense of what to do and how to do it.
Before
After
Haalo
Is there to lend you a hand when you need it the most.
