Overview
Cherish is a mobile app concept for documenting the meaningful objects in your life — family heirlooms, personal treasures, genealogical artifacts — and preparing them for the people who’ll inherit them someday.
Cynerge leadership came to us with a clear question:
How might we create an experience that lets people preserve the story of their objects, for themselves, their loved ones, and future generations?
Over a 6-week design sprint, I led UI design, design system architecture, and prototyping, working alongside a research-focused design partner to take the concept from a vague idea to a fully realized, handoff-ready product.
Think
The space Cherish sits in is emotionally complex. It touches legacy, family dynamics, grief, and legal preparation all at once, which meant research had to go deeper than typical discovery.
We ran a national survey (150+ responses), conducted qualitative interviews across genealogy, museum, and estate-planning professionals, and analyzed competitors ranging from legal platforms like LegalZoom to object-cataloging apps like Artifcts and Thingeology.
The finding that shaped everything: most people want to preserve their family history. They just don’t have a tool that feels approachable enough to actually start. And no existing product combined personal storytelling with estate-planning utility in a meaningful way. That was our opening.
Make
With research synthesized into two primary personas, we defined a product direction grounded in five principles:
- Emotional warmth
- Simple organization
- Story-first design
- Practical depth
- A future-centered approach to generational handoff.
I started with fast half-a-day sketches, then built a mid-fidelity prototype covering the core flows, adding an item, organizing collections, documenting lineage, and preparing a gift list for estate planning, then elevated it to high-fidelity alongside a full design system. Color rooted in comfort and heritage, typography with a literary tone, and components purpose-built for storytelling and item metadata.
Check
We tested in two rounds. Round 1 confirmed the emotional tone and clean interface were landing. Users connected with the storytelling emphasis immediately. The friction points were structural: where genealogical information lived, and how estate-planning fields fit into the item journey.
Round 2, after targeted iteration, showed users moving through flows confidently and expressing genuine emotional connection to the product. That’s the signal you want.
Outcome
Cherish shipped as a complete, handoff-ready concept: high-fidelity prototype, mobile design system, research documentation, annotated flows, and recommendations for the development team.
What started as a rough idea and a set of outdated wireframes became a product with a clear identity, one that makes a heavy, often-avoided task feel meaningful instead of overwhelming.
