Kethan Sivarapu – stargazer.ai

I WONDER...

What does online communication look and feel like today? What relationships are formed, nurtured, or broken? What is quality, effective, enjoyable communication? Why are we experiencing an increase in isolation, fear, and misunderstanding through the interface, and what can we do about it as interaction designers?

MY GOALS...

Slow Interaction Focused on Connection

Today’s online conversations are often fast, fragmented,
and transactional, leading to misunderstandings, emotional fatigue, and surface-level bonds. Create an environment that invites intentional pacing, through ambient prompts, turn-taking, and visual feedback, so users feel safe to gradually move from small talk to deeper emotional exchange.

Visualize What A Conversation Looks Like

Online conversations are often reduced to scrollable text bubbles. Without structure or symbolism, it’s hard to grasp the shape, tone, or impact of a conversation, leading to shallow connections and frequent misreadings. Use constellations as a visual grammar for conversation. Each message becomes a star; themes, emotions, and moments form patterns across time.

Build A Shared Space, Not Shared Text

Most digital conversations happen in rigid, one-size-fits-all interfaces. There's no sense of place, no symbolic space that nurtures bonds over time. Design a visual, symbolic interface that users co-create through their interactions. Constellations give shape and memory to relationships. This shared space promotes ritual, reflection, and emotional continuity, what so many online tools lack.

I STARTED WITH...

A clear understanding of the three key visual words that I wanted to drive the visual language of stargazer.ai. Following the night sky; beautiful, dark, and of course space. This three key words are what farmed my visual moodboard of space, and time, and what felt like to me a dark and mysterious place that users would want to explore. What would be out there? What does this mean?

Beautiful

Dark

Space

MY PROGRESS BEGAN WITH...

Building variations of how the night sky might look like on a web format. Was a design that felt more
environmental, natural, and real the answer? Was the style of the classic constellation drawings better
for the end goal? Or perhaps the sky chart, that felt more simple and clean? The only way to get the
answer was to ask the very people that stargazer.ai was for. Everyone.

INSIGHTS...

Users crave clarity around what constitutes
a “meaningful” interaction.

For stars to connect into constellations or threads to deepen into relationships, users need to understand what behaviors lead to growth.

Visualizing relationships creates self-awareness but risks emotional vulnerability.

Seeing a constellation fade or stay incomplete can create moments of real reflection, but also self-doubt.

Users are more likely to deepen relationships when they can see progress.

When the system reflects back that a relationship is developing, through constellations forming or threads becoming denser, users feel motivated to continue.

AND THEN I...

Broke down that feedback. What issues did people have? What did they find they resonated the most with? What was the most confusing? A lot of people had questions on how stargazer.ai would work, who would they be linked to, but most importantly, why. Why constellations? What was the reason above all else that made me choose to represent their conversations as a star pattern in the sky? This made me realize that the reason what not obvious enough quite yet, the design of stargazer.ai had to make clear the reason why your conversations were constellations.

I VIBE CODED BEFORE I DESIGNED...

Exploring an unfamiliar process, I experimented with Replit for the first time as a way to think through the experience before committing to visual design. This was less about building polished interfaces and more about understanding how stargazer.ai should behave. How might the sky respond to interaction? How should motion, pacing, and feedback feel? While vibe coding was not particularly successful in shaping visual layouts, it helped clarify how the website should perform and how the star themed metaphor could exist through interaction rather than static screens.

I BROKE EVERYTHING APART...

To move forward, I needed to zoom in. I broke stargazer.ai into its smallest components and explored each individually. Stars, buttons, input fields, timelines, connection points, and constellations were all ideated on separately. What should a star feel like? How should connections form? Through this process, an important realization emerged when I finalized the star that would eventually become the logo. From that point on, the design language became clearer, shifting toward a clean and simple aesthetic that allowed the metaphor to exist without unnecessary visual noise.

I QUESTIONED THE CONVERSATION ITSELF...

Still challenging the linear nature of modern online communication, I explored alternative ways users might converse on stargazer.ai. What if messages did not simply stack on top of one another? What if the conversation followed the constellation as it formed? While these ideas aligned strongly with the concept, testing revealed that this approach often confused users more than it excited them. Instead of feeling expressive, the experience became harder to understand. This phase helped define the boundary between experimentation and usability, and reinforced that clarity must come before novelty.

FINAL DESIGNS...

After rounds of research, testing, and exploration, the final design direction of stargazer.ai began to take shape. The interface settled on a dark purple gradient that evokes the night sky without being overly literal. Constellations are integrated directly into the experience, making it clear how conversations form, grow, and connect over time. Because the idea of visualizing conversations as constellations is unfamiliar to many users, the final designs focus on clearly communicating what stargazer.ai is, why it exists, and how to engage with it.

PROTOTYPE...

CONCLUSION...

stargazer.ai began as a question about how we communicate online, but evolved into a broader exploration of connection, meaning, and presence in digital spaces. Through each stage, from early metaphors and visual experiments to testing and refinement, the project became a reflection of conversation itself: layered, evolving, and shaped by the people within it.

Designing stargazer.ai taught me how abstract ideas like emotion, memory, and relationship can be translated into interaction design. It showed me how visual systems can do more than organize information, and instead help people understand the value of what they are sharing. In the end, stargazer.ai is not just a platform for messaging. It is a space that encourages users to slow down, reflect, and see their conversations as something meaningful, lasting, and worth connecting.

STARGAZER.AI