Challenge
Care systems are under strain from multiple directions.
An aging population, rising caregiver burnout, and increasing elderly loneliness are converging into a systemic challenge. Traditional care models struggle to keep up, leaving critical gaps in both emotional support and sustainable caregiving.
So what?
Care for aging populations must adapt to rising complexity if we want to prevent caregiver burnout and elderly isolation.
If care systems continue to rely on fragmented tools and overstretched human labor, the result will be increasing stress for caregivers and declining well-being for patients. Just as technology reshapes work and communication, we need equally adaptive ways to sustain emotional connection, reduce burden, and strengthen resilience in everyday care.
Concept
A conversational approach to more sustainable caregiving.
Aura uses speech-interactive AI to support both caregivers and residents in daily care. For residents, it provides companionship, reminders, and gentle guidance through natural conversation. For caregivers, it streamlines documentation, tracks routines, and reduces cognitive load — all without relying on screens or complex systems.
By combining empathy with efficiency, Aura helps create more time for genuine human connection while making care processes more sustainable.
Development
Auras Development from a Physical Product Concept to a Digital Experience
Throughout this project, you will see the images and process of Aura’s development as a physical product. Aura began as an industrial design university project, originally as part of a medication dispenser. After winning Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, we realized that Aura’s true potential lay in its conversational AI. By evolving it into software that can run on any device, the concept became more accessible and adaptable, transforming the original idea into a broader digital experience.
Competitor Analysis
Current solutions do not exist to address the needs of care & patients.
Aura distinguishes itself by combining proactive engagement, documentation, and seamless integration into daily routines.
Target Group
Focusing on elderly people in need of daily assistance and the caregivers who support them.
The primary target group is elderly individuals receiving at-home care, supported by ambulatory care providers. A secondary group includes elderly residents in stationary care facilities who require daily assistance. In Europe alone, over 220 million elderly people need daily support, with 16 million in Germany and nearly 5 million relying on at-home care, highlighting the scale and urgency of the challenge Aura addresses.
How it works
Using conversational AI to connect patients, caregivers, and families.
Aura serves as a conversational hub between patients, caregivers, and their support networks. Patients engage with Aura through natural dialogue, receiving reminders, check-ins, and companionship. Caregivers benefit from automated documentation and streamlined information flow, reducing cognitive load. This information can be shared with families and doctors, ensuring continuity of care and better-informed decisions.
Each interaction follows a structured AI pipeline: speech input is transcribed by Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), processed through multiple layers of LLM generation for drafting, safety filtering, and personalization, and finally delivered back via Text-to-Speech (TTS). This multi-pass system ensures responses are safe, contextually relevant, and empathetic, while maintaining a natural conversational flow for the user.
Process
Developing Aura across physical and digital dimensions
Early concept drawings explored Aura as a physical product, originally developed as part of a medication dispenser project.
Prototypes and VR models were used to test ergonomics, usability, and integration into everyday care contexts, allowing quick iteration and refinement.
As Aura evolved, its identity shifted toward software. The digital representation became a central UI element, later one of the most important ways users interact with Aura.
Testing
User testing validates the concept: selling back time to care teams and making elderly people less lonely.
Initial testing was conducted with 5 elderly residents during the university phase. These sessions explored how conversational AI could support daily routines, provide companionship, and reduce loneliness. The trials highlighted the importance of simple interactions that required no training, while also informing the early design of Aura’s dialogue style and care integration.
Building on these findings, the second phase of testing involved 30 participants across multiple care homes and scenarios. Here, Aura was evaluated as a software-based concept, focusing on documenting care tasks, supporting caregivers, and enhancing resident well-being. Combined with extensive target-user interviews, these studies confirmed Aura’s potential to save caregivers time while improving residents’ mood and engagement.
Validation
Samsung Solve for Tomorrow
Aura was awarded first place at Samsung Solve for Tomorrow in Germany, receiving the Innovation Award for its potential to transform dementia care through conversational AI.
Over three months, Aura progressed from an initial pitch at Samsung Germany’s Idea Camp in Frankfurt to a refined concept, supported by Samsung mentors. We then entered a six-month Impact Phase in collaboration with Impact Hub Berlin. Here, Aura was further developed with the support of their community, moving from competition concept to practical implementation and positioning itself for real-world application.
Following this achievement, Aura was exhibited at international design events including Milan Design Week and Dutch Design Week, and received the Isola Design Award at Dubai Design Week. The project has been featured in eight major German newspapers and is currently undergoing further development.
Result
Introducing Aura
Aura introduces a new form of care, created to support people with dementia and elderly individuals facing loneliness. It offers personalized conversations and simplifies daily care routines, helping to reduce the strain on the caregiving system. At the same time, Aura enhances emotional well-being, safety, and a sense of connection for both patients, families and their caregivers.
We developed Aura as a conversational AI with a defined structure and clear design system. This version has been realized by us as an MVP, which we are already using for testing in care contexts, validating both functionality and user experience.
Aura’s patient-facing speech-based interface, designed to provide companionship, reassurance, and personalized daily guidance.
Aura’s caretaker-facing overview interface, streamlining care with reduced check-ins, automated documentation, and clear task priorities.
To ensure accessibility and adaptability, Aura was designed to function across multiple platforms. This flexibility allows for use on existing devices in care environments, lowering barriers to adoption and enabling scalability.
While Aura currently exists as a software-first solution, the physical product remains a long-term goal. Reintroducing Aura in a material form would extend its identity into a dedicated device, uniting digital intelligence with its original tangible vision.