CASE STUDY
TapOut: Social Stress Monitor
Role
UX Designer, Researcher
Timeline
3 Days
Tools
AT A GLANCE
TapOut was created for the 2026 FigBuild competition, where our team was challenged to design a tool that could track, measure, or enhance an invisible part of the human sensory experience. We focused on social overwhelm, a deeply human experience that can be difficult to recognize until you have already reached your limit. Our goal was to explore how the signals our bodies and environments already give us could work together to recognize those moments earlier, then give people a simple way to check in, feel supported, and TapOut when they need to.
STRUCTURE
01 - Person
MEET
Mya
"Sometimes I don’t realize I’m overwhelmed until I’m already past my limit."
LOCATION
Work, school, dates, parties & social events
GOALS
Go out without worrying about getting stuck.
Know when their body is getting overwhelmed.
Have an easy way to leave if they need to.
Feel safer in unfamiliar situations.
FRUSTRATIONS
Realizing they are overwhelmed too late.
Feeling rude or awkward leaving early.
Not having an easy way home or out.
Avoiding plans because they might feel drained afterward.
HABITS
Uses a phone and wearable daily.
Enjoys spending time with friends and meeting new people.
Sometimes pushes through discomfort to avoid disappointing others.
May avoid plans when they are already feeling socially drained.
The Overwhelmed Social Butterfly
They love being around people, but sometimes realize too late that they have pushed past their limit. TapOut helps them catch that moment sooner and leave when they need to.
The Quiet Overthinker
They want to say yes to more experiences, but sometimes avoid them because they worry about feeling stuck or overwhelmed. Having a safety plan makes showing up feel a whole lot easier.
02 - Problem
Sometimes you need to leave before you know how to say it.
"I want to go home, but what do I even say?"
I Didn't See It Coming
Sometimes your body knows you're overwhelmed before you do. By the time you notice, you're already past your limit.
I Don't Know How to Leave
You know you want out, but leaving a party, date, meeting, or conversation can feel awkward when you don't have a reason.
What If I Can't Leave?
Worrying about getting overwhelmed can keep people from going at all. Having a plan can make saying yes feel safer.
Maybe I'll Just Stay Home
Worrying about getting overwhelmed can keep people from going at all. Having a plan can make saying yes feel safer.
03 - Solution
TapOut gives you a way out, before you might recognize you even need one.
TapOut is a social stress monitor that uses signals from your connected devices to recognize when you may be reaching your limit. It combines things like heart rate, stress, noise, and crowd density into four simple comfort levels. When you reach Overwhelmed, TapOut checks in and lets you choose: I’m okay, check in later, or TapOut.
Choosing TapOut triggers a customizable phone call that can appear to come from Mom, Work, or whoever you choose, giving you a natural reason to leave. You can also trigger the call yourself at any time, and if you ever feel unsafe, saying your preset safe word during the call sends your location to two trusted contacts.
TapOut also recognizes that leaving isn’t always an option. Support tools can help you through the moment, while insights help you understand your patterns over time. The goal is simple: give people a plan, a way out, and more confidence to show up in the first place.
04 - Process
Research
The idea for TapOut started with something almost everyone on our team could relate to: wanting to leave a social situation and not knowing how.
Maybe you’re at a party and completely drained. Maybe a first date suddenly feels uncomfortable. Maybe you’re having fun, but your body is telling you that you’ve had enough before your brain has caught up.
And sometimes that worry starts before you even leave the house. You want to go, but what if you get overwhelmed? What if you want to leave early? What if you’re stuck?
The FigBuild challenge asked us to quantify an invisible part of the human sensory experience. We realized social overwhelm isn’t as invisible as it feels. Our bodies and environments are constantly giving off little signals like heart rate, stress levels, noise, and crowd density.
What if all of those little signals could work together to notice when you’re reaching your limit?
That became TapOut.
Define
We weren’t trying to build another health dashboard.
Knowing your heart rate is 104 BPM doesn’t necessarily help when you’re standing in the middle of a party thinking, “I really want to go home.”
We wanted the technology to do the complicated part in the background and give the person something actually useful in the moment.
So we built TapOut around a simple idea:
Notice when I might need help. Ask me. Then let me decide.
We created four comfort levels: Relaxed, Mild Stress, Stressed, and Overwhelmed. TapOut can show those levels in the app, but it doesn’t interrupt someone every time their metrics change. The automatic check-in happens when they reach Overwhelmed.
And because everyone is different, users can also tell TapOut when they’re heading into a social situation and temporarily increase monitoring sensitivity.
Ideate
Once we knew what TapOut needed to notice, we started asking the more important question:
What should it actually DO?
A notification alone wasn’t enough. If someone tells the app, “Yes, I’m overwhelmed,” we wanted to give them something useful immediately.
That’s where the TapOut call came from.
Choose TapOut and your phone rings. But instead of saying “TapOut App,” it can look like your mom is calling. Or work. Or whoever you set up ahead of time.
Suddenly, “I don’t know how to leave” becomes “Sorry, I really need to take this.”
We kept building from there. What if the situation feels unsafe? Add a safe word that silently shares your location with two trusted contacts. What if you can’t leave? Give the person tools to breathe, reset, and set boundaries. What if you know you need out before TapOut notices? Put a TapOut Now button right on the home screen.
The app became less about tracking stress and more about what someone might actually need when stress happens.
Prototype
We built the prototype in Figma Make and designed the experience around one core flow:
TapOut notices → checks in → you decide.
When monitoring is active, the app combines information from connected devices and sorts the user’s current comfort into four levels:
Relaxed → Mild Stress → Stressed → Overwhelmed
Once someone reaches Overwhelmed, TapOut sends a check-in notification.
From there, the user can say they’re okay, ask TapOut to check again in 10 minutes, or TapOut immediately.
We also built the interface for the moments outside of that flow. Users can see what their devices are sensing, disconnect devices, manually TapOut in one click, manage trusted contacts and their safe word, view patterns over time, and access support tools.
We wanted the interface to feel friendly because the situation itself might not. That’s why the comfort levels became little characters instead of another clinical-looking stress chart.
Test
We tested TapOut with a survey and received 16 responses.
The feedback showed us that people understood the concept and found the prototype easy to navigate, which was especially important for us. If you’re already overwhelmed, the last thing you need is an app making you think harder.
It also reinforced why we kept the check-in so simple.
I’m okay.
Check in later.
TapOut.
Three choices. No digging through menus. No explaining yourself to the app.
Our prototype also pushed us to think about situations beyond simple social exhaustion. A bad first date, feeling unsafe at a party, being somewhere without your own transportation, or simply needing someone you trust to know where you are all showed us how much further the idea could go.
05 - Result
A social stress monitor became something much more human: a safety plan in your pocket.
16
People tested our prototype and helped us validate that TapOut was simple enough to use when it matters.
4 Levels
Relaxed, Mild Stress, Stressed, and Overwhelmed turn a mess of signals into something you can actually understand.
1 Tap
No waiting for TapOut to notice. If you need out now, you can trigger your exit straight from the home screen.
More Confidence
TapOut isn't only there when things go wrong. Knowing you have a plan can make it easier to say yes in the first place.
TapOut started with empathy.
We weren’t trying to invent a futuristic way to measure people just because we could. We kept coming back to a feeling we understood: I want to leave. I’m uncomfortable. I’m getting overwhelmed. What do I do?
That changed the way we approached almost every feature.
A stress score by itself isn’t very helpful. A notification that only says you’re stressed isn’t very helpful either. We wanted every piece of information TapOut collected to eventually lead back to the person and what they might actually need.
Sometimes that’s an easy excuse to leave. Sometimes it’s getting your location to someone you trust. Sometimes it’s taking a minute to breathe because leaving isn’t possible. And sometimes it’s simply knowing that all of those things are there, which gives you enough confidence to go in the first place.
That’s what I took away from this project most. Good technology doesn’t have to feel like technology. Sometimes it can just feel like someone has your back.