Tabi is a healthtech startup rethinking wellbeing as an interconnected system rather than a collection of habits. Grounded in eight dimensions of wellness, the product aims to help people reflect, prioritize, plan, and sustain progress without burnout.

I joined during an early formative stage, contributing across research, behavioural framing, wireframing, design systems, and product ideation leading into beta and an important product pivot.

The challenge was not simply designing a journaling tool, but exploring a harder question:

Many wellness products assume people fail because they lack discipline. Our research suggested something different.

Users often knew what mattered to them, but struggled to translate broad aspirations into manageable action. They felt overwhelmed by fragmented advice, rigid habit systems, and tools that created guilt when they fell behind.

This pointed to several behavioural barriers:

The gap between intention and action

Choice overload in self improvement

Motivation that fluctuates over time

Low self efficacy when progress feels invisible

The opportunity was to design for support, not pressure.

Through user interviews, journey mapping, and market research, I helped the team examine how people approached wellbeing in practice, not theory.

A core insight emerged: People did not need more wellness inputs. They needed structure that helped them focus.

This shifted design thinking away from feature abundance and toward behavioural scaffolding.

Several principles informed our direction:

Progressive commitment over drastic change

Personal relevance over generic prescriptions

Reflection as a trigger for action

These principles became the lens for evaluating product concepts and prioritizing features.

Rather than treating journaling as an isolated activity, we explored it as part of a broader behaviour change system. I contributed to shaping this system through three areas.

I supported research synthesis, persona refinement, and feature evaluation to help the team prioritize around motivational needs rather than product complexity.

This included helping assess which features strengthened behaviour change mechanisms and which introduced unnecessary cognitive load.

I contributed to wireframes, information architecture, and the early design system, helping translate behavioural concepts into product structure.

One focus was reducing overwhelm by guiding users from reflection into prioritization, then toward smaller actionable steps.

During the pivot phase, I participated in ideation and concept evaluation that helped lay groundwork for a more focused product direction.

Rather than expanding functionality, the work often involved simplifying the system so its behavioural logic became stronger.

One of the biggest lessons was that behavior change products often fail when they optimize for tracking rather than support.

Our research repeatedly suggested:

Users responded better to guided reflection than rigid habit systems

Simplicity often increased perceived usefulness

Adaptive systems felt more motivating than perfection driven systems

These insights shaped how the team thought about the later pivot.

My biggest takeaway:

That idea continues to shape how I approach behavioural design today.