Embrace
A discreet, wearable solution designed to help individuals manage anxiety symptoms wherever they are through multi-sensory feedback.
Anxiety doesn't wait for privacy. Neither should relief.
33% of over 84,000 college students across 135 institutions reported moderate or severe anxiety symptoms in 2024–2025. The coping tools that actually work — weighted blankets, heating pads, cold water, tight hugs — are all home-bound. There's nothing for the exam room, the lecture hall, the presentation.
Existing pharmaceutical options help, but many students are resistant to medication or can't access it consistently. Non-pharmaceutical alternatives on the market address only one symptom mode at a time, and none are designed to be worn discreetly in public.
"It can go from 0 to 100 in a second, but not the other way around."
— Survey respondent, Oct 2024"It's scary because it feels like it won't end at the moment, and if it's really bad, I can't be around other people."
— Survey respondent, Oct 2024Research before product, always
Before committing to a single feature, we ran three rounds of research across students, parents, and medical professionals — to understand the lived experience of anxiety, identify what people already reach for, and test which sensory modalities resonated most.
A key research insight: anxiety is not a "one size fits all" problem. Symptoms varied widely — what grounds one person agitates another. This validated an "and/or" approach to features rather than narrowing to a single modality.
A non-medicated, on-the-go approach for anxiety relief
Embrace (formerly AnxieTee) is a discreet wearable vest delivering four independently controllable sensory modalities: compression, cooling, warmth, and vibration. Each can be activated individually or in combination, allowing users to personalize their response to whatever their body needs in the moment — without drawing social attention or requiring outside resources.
How we got to this design
The concept of a garment that relieves anxiety symptoms stayed constant. Almost everything else evolved through prototyping, testing, and iteration.
The only product doing all four
No existing product combines multi-sensory relief, individual feature control, portability, and a price point accessible to students. Embrace is uniquely positioned — below Apollo Neuro in price while offering more sensory modalities than any single competitor.
| Feature | Embrace | Apollo Neuro | CalmCare Vest | Heat Pads | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-sensory relief | 4 modes | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| Individual feature control | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | |
| Portable & discreet | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | |
| Level adjustability | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ | |
| Price | $249 | $349 | $40–67 | $20–40 |
Active, early-stage, and evolving
Embrace is fully functional with all four features integrated into the MVP. As Co-founder and Head of Product, I'm currently leading early-stage product development in close collaboration with engineering and design — defining and iterating the experience as it evolves.
Active work spans product refinement, early funding exploration, partnership development, and IP development.
The most important thing customer discovery taught us wasn't what features to build — it was who to build for, and why. Narrowing from "anyone with anxiety" to "college students debilitated by somatic symptoms" felt like a loss at first. It turned out to be the decision that made the product real.
Leading product on a hardware startup is different from any digital UX work I've done. Constraints are physical. Pivots are expensive. The gap between "this works on a table" and "this works in a lecture hall" is enormous. The research methods are the same — interview, test, iterate — but the stakes of each decision land differently when the prototype is sitting in front of you and a user's eyes light up and they say "I want that." That moment is still the reason we're building this.