Process
How it Started
When I first moved to New York alone at 18, my mom and I would argue over nothing — a text taken the wrong way, a tone she didn't like, a question I didn't answer fast enough, even something as small as a couch that wasn't facing the direction she wanted. Entire wars fought over WeChat. There were months where we didn't speak at all.
I grew up in a family where love was never the problem. My parents showed up, provided, sacrificed. They moved countries for me. They worked jobs they didn't love so I could have options they never had. None of that was ever in question. What I couldn't figure out was why we couldn't get through a single conversation without it turning into a fight.
What made it worse was the timing. I was alone in a new city, figuring out everything for the first time, and I needed my family more than ever. But instead of getting closer, we fell apart. And when I looked back, honestly, the pattern didn't start in New York. It started at the dinner table in my childhood. I cried through more meals than I can count because dinner at home felt like trials. My mom managed every detail of my life with a grip that felt less like love and more like a lack of trust. In her eyes, my value, my talent, my hard work, none of it was real until someone else confirmed it first. I spent my childhood proving myself to someone who needed proof from everyone except me. Moving away from home didn't break the pattern. It just gave it a new stage.
I spent the past year trying to understand that gap. Learning from structural family therapists who study how family patterns repeat across generations. From clinical psychologists who watch care and control wear the same face. From CPTSD and family origin trauma specialists who trace how early experiences shape every conversation you have as an adult. From content creators who translate these concepts for millions of people who will never step into a therapist's office. Reading Sherry Turkle on how technology gave us constant connection and stripped away the patience that understanding requires. And listening to my own family, for the first time, responding with something other than my defensive mechanism.
I documented everything in weekly blog posts. The posts weren't for an audience. They were how I figured out what I was looking at. By month three, the question had sharpened: this isn't a communication problem. It's a translation problem.
Form Factor Experiments
Once I had the question, I started prototyping how the answer might travel.
Logo sketches. Before I knew what the product was, I knew what it should feel like. I sketched logos around the idea of two shapes that don't quite fit but stay attached anyway. The sketches predated the product by months.
Translation cards. My first real prototype was a physical deck. Each card had two sides — one for the parent, one for the child — translating the same sentence two ways.
App. I tried designing an interface where people could input their own moment and their translation. The app version felt like every other wellness tool in the App Store. It required downloads, accounts, friction. The conversations it produced felt synthetic.
Platform. I tried building Rewire as an offline experience — workshops, hosted conversations where people would come together and translate in person, with me (most likely to hire someone else who is trained) as facilitator. The vision was beautiful, but it can’t scale beyond the room this person was in.
Each prototype taught me what Rewire wasn't. It wasn't physical. It wasn't an app. It wasn't only content. The thing it needed to be was something that lived inside the conversations people were already having — and the conversations people were already having were increasingly with AI.
That's when I started writing the markdown file.
Brand Evolution
The brand evolved alongside the product. Some of it was retired — work that no longer fit the system as it sharpened. Early explorations were designed before the markdown file existed. The identity had no structural connection to the product.