Experiencing Japanese Culture
MA is a meditation app for iPhone currently being developed as a solo project, inspired by zazen and Japanese dry gardens. By adjusting your posture, noticing your breath, and sitting for a while, it brings a quiet practice rooted in Japanese culture into everyday life.
While you sit, the iPhone resting on your legs senses small movements and translates them into lines in the sand. Each completed session remains in the garden as a circle and a stone. Over time, these traces come together to form a garden of your own.
Place the iPhone horizontally on your crossed legs. As you sit, small movements of your body shape the lines drawn on the screen.
Making these movements visible as lines in the sand invites you to notice subtle shifts in your body and bring your attention back to posture and breath. When the session ends, the same line takes shape as raked sand and remains in the garden with a stone.
Time spent sitting remains in the garden as circles in the sand and stones. Daily records connect to form a dry garden of your own.
Alongside the numbers, your accumulated practice becomes a landscape to look back on. Its gradual growth offers an invitation to sit again.
The garden moves through the four seasons: cherry blossoms in spring, bamboo and green maples in summer, autumn foliage, and pine trees with snow in winter. Its expression changes with the passing seasons.
Looking back through your records reveals the scenery of the season in which you sat. Your practice grows alongside the passing of the year.
Choose from five practices: basic zazen, breathing to ease stress, breath-counting zazen, learning zazen, and meditation before sleep.
After starting, illustrations and short instructions guide you through one step at a time, from how to sit to where to place your phone. The introduction lets you follow the next step without memorizing a long set of instructions.
Each sitting practice corresponds to a garden stone: Nachi black stone for basic zazen, Kurama stone for breathing to ease stress, Kibune stone for breath-counting zazen, and Iyo blue stone for learning zazen.
Their different colours and shapes record which practice you chose, connecting stones used in Japanese gardens with everyday experience.
The calendar places a small sand pattern and stone on each day you sit. Consecutive days connect through a band of sand, making the month’s progress and the days ahead visible at a glance.
A streak count and goal day provide cues for the next session. By making progress tangible, the interface aims to support a daily habit.
Share the garden you have grown as an image or a short video. Adding the number of days, sessions and consecutive days lets you share the practice behind the landscape, too.
You can choose whether to include these numbers. The time you have spent sitting becomes a personal landscape to share with someone else.
The garden can also live on your Home Screen. Small, medium and large widgets let you choose a size that fits your daily surroundings.
Your growing garden and a suggested session remain visible before you open the app, creating a natural connection between seeing the garden and sitting again.
Type
Personal Project / Prototype
Role
UI Design / Experience Design
Year
2026
