INKI | Pauline Shay

01 · Overview

What if an AI companion felt less like a chatbot and more like a little creature you could actually connect with?

That question became INKI, a playful AI companion made from a tiny drop of living ink.

INKI talks, listens, reacts, and has a personality of its own. You can feed it, pet it, play together, or simply spend a quiet moment drawing and exploring sounds.

I designed and built INKI from zero to one, bringing together product strategy, visual design, character motion, conversational AI, and mobile development into one experience for iOS and Android.

02 · The idea

Most AI products are designed to help you get something done. I wanted to create one you could simply enjoy spending time with.

Traditional AI conversations often begin and end in a text box. I wanted INKI to feel different.

Instead of putting a chatbot behind a character, I designed the experience around the character itself.

INKI's movements, expressions, and reactions are part of how it communicates. It can be curious, silly, affectionate, or a little mischievous. Sometimes it wants to talk. Sometimes it just wants a snack.

And sometimes, you don't feel like talking at all.

That's why INKI also has quieter experiences for breathing, drawing, playing with liquid ink, and making art.

The goal wasn't to make AI more human. It was to give AI a character that felt playful, expressive, and fun to interact with.

03 · Product goals

01Make INKI feel alive.Give the character a sense of presence through fluid motion, expressions, and reactions. The character should communicate even when it isn't speaking.

02Make interaction feel effortless.Whether someone has thirty seconds or half an hour, there should always be something simple and enjoyable to do.

03Build a relationship that grows.Create a Bond and Evolution system where conversations, feeding, petting, and play contribute to a companion that changes over time.

04Create a companion, not a replacement for people.INKI can be warm, supportive, and playful while remaining transparent about being AI and respecting important safety boundaries.

04 · Designing the experience

I organized INKI around six connected experiences, each offering a different way to interact with the same character.

01CompanionThe heart of INKI. Feed your little blob, pet it, watch its reactions, and build your bond through everyday interactions.

02TalkA conversational experience that supports both voice and text. INKI listens, responds, and reacts with its body, making conversation feel more expressive than a traditional chat interface.

03EvolutionA progression system built around 100 Bond levels. As your relationship grows, INKI unlocks new appearances, foods, and milestones.

04Me TimeSimple guided breathing experiences for moments when you want to slow down.

05ZenAn interactive space for drawing, swirling liquid ink, and exploring calming sounds without scores, timers, or pressure.

06CreatorA playful canvas for experimenting with ink, colors, and stamps, then saving your creations.

05 · From interaction to connection

The challenge was making all these features feel like one companion, not six separate tools.

The experience begins with INKI itself.

A new user meets the character, chooses how to interact, and gradually discovers its different behaviors.

Talking, feeding, petting, and playing all contribute to the same relationship. As the bond grows, INKI evolves and becomes more personalized.

I wanted these small interactions to matter without turning the experience into a chore.

There are no punishments for missing a day, and the companion doesn't make users feel guilty for leaving.

INKI should be something people want to return to, not something they feel obligated to maintain.

06 · Designing and building with AI

INKI is one of my most hands-on projects, where design and engineering happened together from the beginning.

I used Figma and Claude Design to explore the visual direction and interaction concepts, then worked with Claude Code and Cursor to develop the app using React Native.

A major part of the challenge was designing the liquid character.

INKI needed to feel expressive without relying on a traditional face or humanlike avatar. I explored how movement, stretching, bouncing, spinning, and subtle reactions could communicate personality.

The conversational experience introduced another set of challenges.

Voice interactions need to feel responsive. INKI has to know when to listen, when to think, when to speak, and when to stop.

I designed and tested these states on real devices, refining how speech, text, character reactions, and animations work together.

The project also involved account management, subscriptions, backend integration, AI usage limits, and privacy considerations.

Building the product myself allowed me to move directly between design decisions, implementation, and testing.

07 · Key design decisions

01The character comes first.Rather than treating INKI as a decorative avatar beside a chat window, its reactions and movement are part of the interaction itself.

02Voice and text have different purposes.Voice creates a more personal, expressive interaction. Text gives users a quieter way to communicate. Both belong in the same experience without competing for attention.

03Progression should feel rewarding, not demanding.The Bond system rewards meaningful interactions. A simple streak shows how many days in a row you've visited, but missing a day just starts the count over, with no penalties or pressure to return.

04Personality develops through interaction.INKI is designed to build its own preferences, remember appropriate details, and become more distinct over time rather than simply repeating the user's personality.

05AI should be playful and transparent.INKI is a fictional companion powered by AI. Its personality can feel lively without pretending to be human or providing professional advice.

08 · Launch and what's next

INKI brings together the core companion experience, conversational AI, voice interactions, Bond and Evolution, creative activities, account management, and subscriptions.

The product is designed to keep growing through new character behaviors, more personalized conversations, and additional ways to play together.

The next step is learning how people actually interact with INKI and using those insights to refine the experience.

I am also starting to explore how INKI could move beyond the phone and into the real world as a desktop robot.

09 · What this project represents

INKI is an exploration of what happens when AI, interaction design, and character design come together.

It challenged me to think beyond screens and flows and consider how movement, personality, memory, sound, and conversation can work together as one experience.

From the earliest concept to a working cross-platform application, I was responsible for the product vision, design, prototyping, implementation, and testing.

It's the kind of work I enjoy most: taking an idea from zero to one, figuring out the hard parts, and turning it into something people can actually use.