MyBodyBuddy

MyBodyBuddy is an immersive app experience designed to critically engage users with the potential dangers associated with weight loss apps, while fostering important discussions about body image in the digital age. Through interactive scenarios, real-time feedback, and educational content, the app parodies common features of weight loss applications to highlight the risks and misconceptions they often propagate. Through dark humor, exaggerated UI interactions, and escalating behavior, the experience immerses users in the absurdity and cruelty of diet culture as amplified by digital tools.

Encouraged Flow Through Social-Ecosystem Parody

Satirical apps like Thinstagram and Yumblr mimic real apps, letting users explore before the critical shift becomes obvious.

Each app opens to a working scrollable feed using Unity’s ScrollView or SwiftUI Lists.

In-app notifications use native-style banners to blur simulation boundaries.

Critical Engagement Through Touch-Based Exploration

The app encourages users to engage with its interface through familiar tap, scroll, and swipe gestures — but instead of providing empowering feedback, it gradually reveals manipulative, harmful content. This tactile familiarity becomes a trap, turning the user’s own actions into instruments of critique.

Tap-to-open interactions mimic native app behavior (e.g., tapping on MyBodyBuddy opens a login flow that feels intuitive but leads to increasingly hostile screens).
All interactions are deliberately simple, making the unfolding satire feel personal and inescapable — users aren’t just seeing a critique, they’re enacting it.

Encouraged Flow Through Social-Ecosystem Parody

Satirical apps like Thinstagram and Yumblr mimic real apps, letting users explore before the critical shift becomes obvious.

Each app opens to a working scrollable feed using Unity’s ScrollView or SwiftUI Lists.

In-app notifications use native-style banners to blur simulation boundaries.

Critical Engagement Through Touch-Based Exploration

Tap-to-open interactions mimic native app behavior (e.g., tapping on MyBodyBuddy opens a login flow that feels intuitive but leads to increasingly hostile screens).
All interactions are deliberately simple, making the unfolding satire feel personal and inescapable — users aren’t just seeing a critique, they’re enacting it.

Progressive Disorientation

As users spend more time, the apps start showing eerie ads and push notifications, replicating media spiral effects.

Conditional logic triggers notification pop-ups (“Come back to Yumblr for inspo”) after timed use.
Subtle changes in typography and content tone to signal emotional manipulation.

Manipulative Feedback Loops

Feedback systems punish the user, reinforcing guilt — mimicking toxic app patterns.

Dynamic deficit ring coded to say “BAD” or turn red at low effort.
Calorie log uses subtractive logic where every food entry penalizes progress.

Affective MicroInteractions

Tiny animations and sounds evoke discomfort and unease, turning neutral inputs into emotional triggers.

“Vicky the Stick Bug” is a looping animated sprite that gets squished if calories exceed a threshold.
Subtle haptic cues (or visual shake feedback) added to shame-triggered actions.

Media Spiral Simulation

Content becomes increasingly extreme, parodying how algorithms exploit vulnerability.

Scrolling feed with randomized image/text combos pulled from a database.
Triggered notifications increase frequency based on time spent on app.

Simulated Interface & Layered Immersion

The interface mimics a real smartphone to guide users through an unfolding narrative from curiosity to obsession.

Designed a tappable fake OS that mimics iOS flow and behavior.
Users “download” MyBodyBuddy inside the app—either through ads on other “apps” or directly from the “App Store”— this is an app within an app.

Aesthetic Familiarity as Trojan Horse

Familiar UI patterns (rounded icons, soft gradients, subtle haptics) build trust, which is later broken as the tone shifts.

Custom app icons and splash screens that mirror real wellness and social apps.

Home screen layout uses proportional spacing and Apple HIG-style app placement.

Encouraged Flow Through Social-Ecosystem Parody

Satirical apps like Thinstagram and Yumblr mimic real apps, letting users explore before the critical shift becomes obvious.

Each app opens to a working scrollable feed using Unity’s ScrollView or SwiftUI Lists.

In-app notifications use native-style banners to blur simulation boundaries.

Critical Engagement Through Touch-Based Exploration

Tap-to-open interactions mimic native app behavior (e.g., tapping on MyBodyBuddy opens a login flow that feels intuitive but leads to increasingly hostile screens).
All interactions are deliberately simple, making the unfolding satire feel personal and inescapable — users aren’t just seeing a critique, they’re enacting it.

Encouraged Flow Through Social-Ecosystem Parody

Satirical apps like Thinstagram and Yumblr mimic real apps, letting users explore before the critical shift becomes obvious.

Each app opens to a working scrollable feed using Unity’s ScrollView or SwiftUI Lists.

In-app notifications use native-style banners to blur simulation boundaries.

Critical Engagement Through Touch-Based Exploration

Tap-to-open interactions mimic native app behavior (e.g., tapping on MyBodyBuddy opens a login flow that feels intuitive but leads to increasingly hostile screens).
All interactions are deliberately simple, making the unfolding satire feel personal and inescapable — users aren’t just seeing a critique, they’re enacting it.

Progressive Disorientation

As users spend more time, the apps start showing eerie ads and push notifications, replicating media spiral effects.

Conditional logic triggers notification pop-ups (“Come back to Yumblr for inspo”) after timed use.
Subtle changes in typography and content tone to signal emotional manipulation.

Manipulative Feedback Loops

Feedback systems punish the user, reinforcing guilt — mimicking toxic app patterns.

Dynamic deficit ring coded to say “BAD” or turn red at low effort.
Calorie log uses subtractive logic where every food entry penalizes progress.

Affective MicroInteractions

Tiny animations and sounds evoke discomfort and unease, turning neutral inputs into emotional triggers.

“Vicky the Stick Bug” is a looping animated sprite that gets squished if calories exceed a threshold.
Subtle haptic cues (or visual shake feedback) added to shame-triggered actions.

Media Spiral Simulation

Content becomes increasingly extreme, parodying how algorithms exploit vulnerability.

Scrolling feed with randomized image/text combos pulled from a database.
Triggered notifications increase frequency based on time spent on app.

Simulated Interface & Immersion

The interface mimics a real smartphone to guide users through an unfolding narrative from curiosity to obsession.

Designed a tappable fake OS that mimics iOS flow and behavior.
Users “download” MyBodyBuddy inside the app—either through ads on other “apps” or directly from the “App Store”— this is an app within an app.

Aesthetic Familiarity as Trojan Horse

Familiar UI patterns (rounded icons, soft gradients, subtle haptics) build trust, which is later broken as the tone shifts.

Custom app icons and splash screens that mirror real wellness and social apps.

Home screen layout uses proportional spacing and Apple HIG-style app placement.

Encouraged Flow Through Social-Ecosystem Parody

Satirical apps like Thinstagram and Yumblr mimic real apps, letting users explore before the critical shift becomes obvious.

Each app opens to a working scrollable feed using Unity’s ScrollView or SwiftUI Lists.

In-app notifications use native-style banners to blur simulation boundaries.

Critical Engagement Through Touch-Based Exploration

Tap-to-open interactions mimic native app behavior (e.g., tapping on MyBodyBuddy opens a login flow that feels intuitive but leads to increasingly hostile screens).
All interactions are deliberately simple, making the unfolding satire feel personal and inescapable — users aren’t just seeing a critique, they’re enacting it.

Encouraged Flow Through Social-Ecosystem Parody

Satirical apps like Thinstagram and Yumblr mimic real apps, letting users explore before the critical shift becomes obvious.

Each app opens to a working scrollable feed using Unity’s ScrollView or SwiftUI Lists.

In-app notifications use native-style banners to blur simulation boundaries.

Critical Engagement Through Touch-Based Exploration

Tap-to-open interactions mimic native app behavior (e.g., tapping on MyBodyBuddy opens a login flow that feels intuitive but leads to increasingly hostile screens).
All interactions are deliberately simple, making the unfolding satire feel personal and inescapable — users aren’t just seeing a critique, they’re enacting it.

Progressive Disorientation

As users spend more time, the apps start showing eerie ads and push notifications, replicating media spiral effects.

Conditional logic triggers notification pop-ups (“Come back to Yumblr for inspo”) after timed use.
Subtle changes in typography and content tone to signal emotional manipulation.

Manipulative Feedback Loops

Feedback systems punish the user, reinforcing guilt — mimicking toxic app patterns.

Dynamic deficit ring coded to say “BAD” or turn red at low effort.
Calorie log uses subtractive logic where every food entry penalizes progress.

Affective MicroInteractions

Tiny animations and sounds evoke discomfort and unease, turning neutral inputs into emotional triggers.

“Vicky the Stick Bug” is a looping animated sprite that gets squished if calories exceed a threshold.
Subtle haptic cues (or visual shake feedback) added to shame-triggered actions.

Media Spiral Simulation

Content becomes increasingly extreme, parodying how algorithms exploit vulnerability.

Scrolling feed with randomized image/text combos pulled from a database.
Triggered notifications increase frequency based on time spent on app.

Simulated Interface & Immersion

The interface mimics a real smartphone to guide users through an unfolding narrative from curiosity to obsession.

Designed a tappable fake OS that mimics iOS flow and behavior.
Users “download” MyBodyBuddy inside the app—either through ads on other “apps” or directly from the “App Store”— this is an app within an app.

Aesthetic Familiarity as Trojan Horse

Familiar UI patterns (rounded icons, soft gradients, subtle haptics) build trust, which is later broken as the tone shifts.

Custom app icons and splash screens that mirror real wellness and social apps.

Home screen layout uses proportional spacing and Apple HIG-style app placement.

Role

Concept Designer, UI/UX Designer, Developer

Tools

AdobeXD, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, React

Timeframe

March 2023 - May 2023

Idea

MyBodyBuddy is a speculative design project that parodies wellness and weight loss apps in order to explore how digital platforms manipulate users’ emotions, bodies, and behaviors. The project critiques the normalization of disordered eating, toxic positivity, and algorithmic pressure by mimicking — and then exaggerating — the interface patterns of real health-tracking tools.

Set within a fully simulated mobile environment, MyBodyBuddy immerses users in a familiar aesthetic world only to gradually reveal its underlying harm. Through this interaction, the piece aims to make users feel complicit in — and then critical of — the systems they often unconsciously trust. The app is not designed to be helpful; it’s designed to be unsettling. By placing users inside the logic of these systems, it reveals how interface design itself can reinforce cultural narratives around shame, beauty, and self-worth.

Execution

To bring this concept to life, I created an interactive mock smartphone environment with tappable apps, faux notifications, and an internal app store. Users can explore parody social apps (Thinstagram, Yumblr), designed to feel sleek, safe, and algorithmically “personalized.” These apps act as an entry point to the main experience — MyBodyBuddy — which grows more invasive and emotionally manipulative over time.

Visual Design mimics the flat, minimal UI of wellness apps, using soft color palettes and rounded edges that contrast with harsh, judgmental feedback.
Interaction Design plays with expectations: sliders and buttons feel familiar but give unsettling responses. For example, a weight loss goal slider rewards dangerously extreme numbers, reflecting real-life gamified fitness platforms.
Animation & Feedback reinforce emotional pressure. For instance, “Vicky the Stick Bug,” a cartoon avatar, gets squashed when users eat “too much,” turning calorie tracking into a punitive spectacle.
Content Systems escalate over time, simulating how real algorithms trap users in feedback loops of insecurity, body surveillance, and disordered content.

The app isn’t just a parody but a critique: the interface is the message. By wrapping cultural commentary in a polished, functional environment, MyBodyBuddy prompts users to reflect not only on what they see but also on how digital tools shape their perceptions and behaviors.

Parody

Alterations

Parody

Alterations

Parody

Alterations