Blumiin: Herbal Remedies, Told Honestly
Timeline
June 2026
Context
Skandalaris Hackathon
Intern Pitch Winner
Role
Designer, team of 5
Tools
Claude Code, Figma Slides, HTML/CSS/JS
The Brief
Make Blumiin the trusted home for herbal discovery: a product people trysymptom-first search, return tothe My Herbs loop, and preferverified community over Reddit, TikTok, and AI advice.
The hackathon prompt, given to every team. Our answer: honesty is the gap no one else fills, so we made it the product.
Outcome
A two-hour pitch that won the room
The brief asked for lightweight wireframes. I brought a working, branded app. The trust system wasn’t described, it was demoed.
1st
Skandalaris intern pitch
Team of 5, I was the designer
2 hrs
From assets to winning pitch
Deck, live demo, go-to-market
84%
Distrust herbal regulation
The research behind our claim
The Solution
Tradition and evidence, side by side
A phone-first remedy guide where every claim carries its receipts: what tradition says, what research found, what to watch out for.
“Clear about what’s proven, honest about what isn’t.”
Features
Four surfaces, each answering one goal from the brief: try it, trust it, prefer it, return to it.
Goal · Try it
Search by symptom, not by species
People think in problems, not Latin names. Home opens on a symptom-first search with Myth vs Evidence verdicts: “Detox teas? Not supported.”
Goal · Trust it
Every remedy leads with its evidence
Badge color = evidence strength. Every detail page opens on two meters, evidence and safety, before a single benefit.
Goal · Prefer it
Community remedies earn their status
Reddit’s energy, minus the guesswork: posts render as dashed cards, never confusable with rated content, and expert backing or 25 saves graduates a remedy to Explore.
Goal · Return to it
Allergies don’t warn, they exclude
Flagged allergens vanish from the app. Medication flags never green-light. My Herbs logs real use, the loop that brings people back.
Design Decisions
Two calls I’d defend in any review
Finding the right direction fast
Blue/teal read as pharma, the one authority this product can’t claim. Rebuilt as a warm forest system in one evening; the IA carried over untouched.
The token set that replaced blue/teal.
Deleting a working Q&A tab
Expert comments plus a “Has expert input” filter covered the whole use case, so the tab went. The recordings above still show the old five-tab nav, days before the cut.
OUTCOME: one fewer destination, same capability. Subtraction is a design move.
The Pitch
Lead with the claim, close with a label
Five of us, two hours: claim → research → live demo → close. The closer: free samples with honest labels: benefits and cautions side by side, QR into Blumiin.
15%
Strongly trust pharmaceutical companies
84%
Don't believe herbal medicine is well regulated
Millions
Turning to natural remedies with no honest guide
Reflection
What Blumiin taught me about designing for trust
Honesty is a design system, not a paragraph
Badge colors, dashed borders, hard excludes: the interface makes it impossible to confuse proven with unproven. No disclaimer required.
Deleting a feature is a design decision
The Q&A tab worked, but it duplicated expert comments. Subtraction is a first-class move.
A pitch is a design artifact too
Lead with the claim, let evidence carry the weight, end with something tangible. The honest-label sample did more than any feature list.
What I’d do differently
The win validated the pitch, not the trust system. The badge colors and the 25-save threshold were never user-tested. Honest about what’s proven, honest about what isn’t.