Product Design · Mobile · AI Health Companion
Qetos: daily momentum
Qetos is an AI-powered health companion that transforms complex functional-medicine protocols into calm, time-aware daily actions. Instead of handing patients a dense clinical PDF and expecting perfect adherence, Qetos guides them through the day with progressive disclosure, AI coaching, biometric context, and positive reinforcement.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Timeline
Summer 2026
Team
Design — Raúl Falcón
Type
Consumer Health · AI Companion
Overview
Helping users feel capable, not corrected
The product began as a strict habit-compliance prototype, but through repeated user interviews, playtesting sessions, sketching, and interface iteration, it evolved into a more empathetic system: one that helps users feel capable, not corrected.
As Lead Product Designer I owned product strategy, UX research, user interviews, playtesting, interaction design, UI systems, behavioral psychology, prototyping, and visual design.
Qetos explores how AI can make complex healthcare behavior feel emotionally manageable — transforming a dense functional-medicine protocol into a calm mobile companion that guides users through daily actions, rewards progress, and creates structured adherence data for future clinical dashboards.
The Problem
Clinical protocols are powerful — but hard to live with
Functional-medicine patients often receive highly personalized recommendations: diet changes, supplements, breathwork, sleep recovery, light exposure, movement, bloodwork, glucose or ketone tracking, and symptom journaling.
On paper, these protocols are medically useful. In daily life, they quickly become overwhelming.
In early user testing, a single optimal health plan required 26 minutes of deep focus just to understand. Users had to decode what mattered, when to act, how to prioritize, and what counted as progress. The core issue was not motivation. It was translation.
Patients were being asked to turn clinical complexity into daily behavior without an interface designed to support that transition.
26 min
Of deep focus to understand one optimal health plan (User Test v1)
10+
Daily interventions — diet, supplements, breathwork, recovery and tracking
Translation
The real barrier to adherence — not motivation
Key Early Insight
The protocol was not the product
The daily interpretation layer was the product. Qetos needed to become the missing behavioral interface between clinical instruction and real human follow-through.
How might we translate a medical protocolClinical protocol into a mobile experienceMobile product that leverages positive reinforcementReward, not guilt to drive long-term adherenceDaily follow-through?
Research
Understanding why users abandon health plans
I conducted multiple rounds of user interviews and playtesting sessions to understand how people actually respond to protocol-based health routines.
The research focused on three questions.
01
What makes a protocol feel overwhelming?
Users struggled when too many tasks appeared at once. Seeing the whole plan created a feeling of being behind before they had even started.
02
What makes tracking feel negative?
Interfaces that emphasized missed habits, red warnings, or failed streaks made users feel judged. Punitive tracking increased avoidance instead of accountability.
03
What makes users want to continue?
Users responded to language that framed actions as wins, recoveries, and momentum. They wanted the app to acknowledge effort, not only perfect compliance.
Comparative Research
The missing middle between trackers & medical portals
I mapped Qetos against two existing product categories to find the gap it needed to fill.
Qetos sits in the missing middle — combining the motivational rhythm of a habit product with the seriousness and structure of a clinical protocol system.
The Initial Prototype
A strict adherence model that created the wrong emotion
The first prototype focused on compliance. It showed tasks, progress, and missed actions clearly. On the surface, it looked functional.
But user feedback revealed a serious UX flaw: the interface made people feel like they were failing. Missed tasks, rigid checklists, and clinical warnings created a shame loop.
Users did not need more reminders that they were behind. They needed a system that helped them re-enter the protocol without guilt.
The central pivot: from compliance tracking to momentum design.
Design Strategy
Turn the protocol into a daily companion
The final product direction was built around three UX principles.
01
Progressive disclosure
Instead of showing the full protocol at once, Qetos breaks the day into time-boxed moments — supplements from 8–9 AM, breathwork when stress is elevated, food logging after a meal, a reset when recovery is low. This reduces cognitive load and makes the protocol feel manageable.
02
Positive reinforcement
Qetos reframes adherence as a series of victories. Instead of asking, “Did you fail or complete this task?” it asks, “What did you win today?” — turning tracking into a reward loop instead of a guilt loop.
03
Context-aware AI guidance
The AI layer acts as a calm health concierge, responding to biometric recovery, food intake, ketone readings, symptoms, and goals. Rather than overwhelming the user with raw data, Qetos translates context into one gentle next step.
Signature Interaction
The “Log a Victory” shift
The most important UX decision was replacing punitive check-offs with positive logging. Instead of centering missed tasks, Qetos encourages users to recognize moments of successful behavior — especially important in health, where perfection is rare and shame causes disengagement.
The “Log a Victory” modal became the emotional center of the product, letting users record meaningful wins like navigating a craving, completing a deep work session, or eating a protocol-aligned meal. It changed the tone from clinical monitoring to personal momentum.
Final Product
A calm AI health companion for daily adherence
The final Qetos prototype connects a set of mobile experiences — each one a small, low-friction moment in the day.
Product System
B2C behavior, B2B clinical intelligence
Qetos was designed as a consumer-facing mobile product, but the data model was shaped with a clinical backend in mind.
Every logged action — meal, symptom, ketone reading, breathing reset, or victory — can become structured behavioral data for a future doctor-facing dashboard.
The patient receives encouragement and clarity. The clinician receives adherence signals and behavioral context.
Impact & Learnings
From overload to agency
The product evolved through research, playtesting, and repeated iteration — from a rigid task tracker into a more human-centered AI health companion.
01
26 minutes → daily micro-actions
A dense clinical plan became a sequence of small, time-aware actions surfaced exactly when they matter.
02
Punitive tracking → positive reinforcement
The interface shifted away from failure states and toward behavioral wins, removing the shame loop that drove avoidance.
03
Static protocol → adaptive companion
The product moved from a fixed checklist to a contextual AI system that recommends what to do next — and quietly builds adherence data for future clinical dashboards.
Qetos explores how AI can make complex healthcare behavior feel emotionally manageable — guiding users through daily actions, rewarding progress, and creating structured adherence data for future clinical care teams.
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