Case File № 005
Solace App
— a quieter kind of health app
A design system and product shell for a small health tech startup. Shipped in six weeks, designed to feel calmer than anything else in the category.
The Brief
A product for moments when users don't want a product.
Solace is a small team building an app for people recovering from chronic illness. The design brief started with a simple constraint: most of their users open the app on their worst days. A "delightful" interface would read as condescending — but a sterile clinical one would feel cold.
We needed a design language that was calm, legible, and trustworthy without being medical.
Approach
A design system that disappears.
I built Solace's design system from tokens up — three type sizes, a generous scale, soft shadows, accessible contrast at every state. The entire system is 38 components and 12 primitives, built on Radix UI with Tailwind as the styling layer.
Every animation respects prefers-reduced-motion by default. The product shell (navigation, layouts, modals) was built alongside the system so the first surface shipped the day the tokens landed.
Outcome
A system that keeps shipping.
Solace shipped to a small closed beta and the product team has continued to extend the design system — new surfaces now come online in days instead of weeks. The care that went into reduced-motion, contrast, and screen-reader states was repeatedly cited in early user interviews as "just feeling right."