OSA
Obstructive sleep apnea
The most common form — the upper airway physically collapses or is blocked, restricting oxygen even as the body keeps trying to breathe.
Nocta / AI CPAP Companion
A night,
narrated.
Nocta reads a CPAP machine's overnight data and writes one honest, plain-language story — what happened, what likely caused it, and the single next thing to try.
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01 The Problem
Most people quit CPAP therapy before it can help them.
CPAP apps swing between two failures: they bury patients under raw charts, or they hide the data entirely behind a single green checkmark. Neither builds the confidence and curiosity that keep someone wearing an uncomfortable mask night after night — so most stop within the first month.
A two-minute primer
What we're working with
Before the design, a little context. Three things shape every decision in Nocta: the condition, the hardware that treats it, and the rule that decides whether insurance keeps paying for it.
01 · The condition
What is sleep apnea?
Sleep apnea is a disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep. Pauses can last from a few seconds to minutes and may happen hundreds of times a night — fragmenting sleep and starving the body of oxygen. There are two main types.
CSA
Central sleep apnea
Less common and harder to spot — the part of the brain that controls breathing misses a beat, so the body simply doesn't try to breathe.
02 · The device
What is a CPAP machine?
CPAP — Continuous Positive Airway Pressure — delivers a steady stream of pressurized air through a mask worn over the nose or mouth, splinting the airway open through the night. Pressure and timing are tuned to the patient, and the machine quietly logs every breath it delivers.
The machines
The masks — fit is everything
part elephant…
…part Top Gun
03 · The stakes
And what is “compliance”?
Compliance is how consistently you use the machine as prescribed. Insurers define it with a hard threshold — and it's where most people fall off, often without realizing the clock is running.
4hper night
+
70%of nights
within
30days
Miss that bar and you can lose insurance coverage entirely — paying out of pocket for the machine, the mask, and every replacement supply. The pressure to “pass” often matters more to people than the therapy itself.
02 Desk Research
The numbers were bleak.
Secondary research across the National Library of Medicine, BMC Pulmonary Medicine, and the Journal of the American Heart Association painted a clear gap between diagnosis and follow-through.
30M
Americans are suspected of having sleep apnea
25–34%
stay on CPAP therapy past the one-year mark
6.8%
are both diagnosed and stick with treatment long-term
Competitive Analysis
Powerful but cold — or polished but elsewhere.
I scanned the apps people already use: the CPAP-specific tools built for the data, and the consumer wellness apps built for the habit. The gap between the two — clinical depth with a human voice — is where Nocta lives.
Direct · CPAP & sleep-data tools
SleepHQ
Deep CPAP analytics — powerful, but built for power users.
ResMed myAir
The official app — one nightly score, little of the “why”.
OSCAR
Free desktop software — every data point, zero guidance.
Indirect · Consumer wellness & wearables
Oura
Beautiful readiness scores — but blind to CPAP.
Whoop
Strain & recovery, gorgeously visualized and habit-forming.
Pillow
Friendly iOS sleep tracking — warm, but light on depth.
Community Research
The same story, hundreds of times.
Beyond the studies, I read through r/CPAP and r/SleepApnea — the human side of that 6.8%. Post after post described the same struggle: drowning in raw numbers, fighting clunky tools like OSCAR, and just wanting someone to explain what it all means.
Underneath the frustration, the same quiet hope kept surfacing —
User Interviews
Six CPAP users, one recurring wish.
I sat down with six people who actually wear the mask every night — an engineer, a veteran, a self-treating researcher, a designer, a retired lawyer, and a long-haul trucker. Very different lives, strikingly similar frustrations.
KL
Kathy Lee
Software Engineer · Portland
Wished out loud for a “CPAP virtual assistant” that gives tips for her specific issues.
ResMed F40 · myAir + SleepHQ
CF
Cody Fowler
Veteran & Student
myAir's averaged-out data hides what actually happened overnight.
Memory-foam mask · myAir
SJ
Susan John
Self-treating researcher
Self-tunes with OSCAR, Python & ChatGPT — wants longitudinal depth and autonomy.
APAP / ASV · OSCAR
MR
Miles Rochford
Product Designer · San Francisco
It shouldn't feel so medical — therapy should feel personal.
BiPAP — OSA + CSA · MyBreeze + SleepHQ + OSCAR
RT
Robert Tucker
Lawyer, 66
A comfortable mask is what makes compliance actually stick.
BiPAP · ResMed AirSense 10 · myAir
MB
Marcus Bell
Long-haul Trucker · Ohio
I need to know I'm passing compliance — my CDL depends on it.
ResMed AirMini, on the road · myAir
What I heard, again and again
Mask fit is the real battle
Nearly everyone cycled through many masks (Kathy tried nine) before one stuck — and discomfort is exactly where people quit.
Apps are all-or-nothing
myAir felt too shallow; OSCAR too complex. Everyone wanted the missing middle — real detail, without the overwhelm.
They want a guide, not a dashboard
From “virtual assistant” to ChatGPT consults, users already reach for AI to interpret the data and say what to try next.
It feels clinical — it should feel human
Compliance pressure makes therapy feel like being a medical device. People wanted warmth, autonomy, and encouragement.
The Opportunity
“How might we make CPAP data feel actionable and human — so people feel guided, not graded?”
The Solution
Distill each night into one honest story — what happened, what likely caused it, and the single next thing to try — wrapped in calm charts and wearable context.
Before the pixels
Divergent sketches.
Before opening Figma I sketched widely on paper — many rough takes on the nightly story, the dashboard, and how a single number should feel. Most were wrong, which was exactly the point: cheap to draw, cheap to throw away.
Iterations
Three passes to the right feel.
Back in March 2025, Nocta was my grad-school capstone — researched, designed, and built entirely by hand, no AI in the loop. Each pass clarified the hierarchy and warmed the palette, moving from grey wireframes toward a darker, calmer system.
03 Design System
Designing for 2 a.m.
People open Nocta in the dark, half-awake, often anxious about a number. The system leans into that — a deep-navy canvas, one warm sunrise-peach accent reserved for the AI's voice, and serif numerals that read calm rather than clinical.
Palette
Base
Surface
Metric
Attention
Accent
Typeface
Instrument Serif
Display & numerals — the calm, human voice
Inter
Body & UI — quiet and legible
The “why-card”
The hero component — and the whole product in miniature. Every morning it renders one of five states, from a steady night to a flagged escalation.
- 01 A one-line verdict, in plain language
- 02 A sparkline carrying the shape of the night
- 03 Exactly one suggested next action
- 04 A tappable “receipts” row — the data it reasoned from
The Result · Today
A more personal way to treat sleep apnea.
04 Features
Five surfaces, one calm story.
01
The AI why-card
Instead of a wall of charts, the first thing you see is a sentence: what last night was, in your words. It stays honest on rough nights, hedges on cause, and ends with one concrete thing to try.
Tap the receipts row and it shows its work — the exact metrics it reasoned from, plus a confidence label.
02
Tonight, at a glance
Below the story sits last night's AHI against your personal baseline, scannable secondary metrics, and a timeline of the night with apnea events marked and tappable.
Open any night for the full breath-by-breath stack — flow, pressure, leak, and snore.
03
Trends over time
Zoom out to 7, 30, or 90 nights. Every chart shares one date axis, so AHI, pressure, leak, and usage line up at a glance.
Best- and worst-night comparisons surface what changed, and journal patterns connect what you logged to how you slept.
04
Therapy & compliance
A projection bar shows where the 30-day compliance window stands without ever feeling like a grade. Equipment reminders flag a worn mask or filter.
One tap exports a clean, AI-free PDF to bring to the doctor.
05
Connected devices
Apple Watch, Oura, and Whoop layer heart rate, HRV, and sleep stages onto the same night, one card per source — each pausable per-permission without disconnecting.
Adding a device runs a full mock OAuth flow: authorize, sync 30 nights, done.
05 AI Safety Rails
An insight that knows its limits.
The moment an app interprets clinical data, it risks becoming a regulated medical device. Nocta's AI lives inside hard rails: every insight is typed JSON with cited data, a confidence label, and a disclaimer — and certain patterns route straight to “talk to your doctor.”
Honest, not cheerful
No “great job!”, no streak trophies. A bad night is named calmly and plainly.
Hedged on cause
“This pattern often suggests…” — never “this means” or “you have.”
Never diagnoses
It won't name a condition or recommend a pressure change. Ever.
Escalates to a doctor
Central-apnea or SpO₂ patterns trip a physician-referral flag.
06 Testing → Shipped
From feedback to features.
I brought survey and interview participants back to test mid-fidelity wireframes. Their three biggest asks moved from “nice idea” to shipped in the working prototype.
Insight
Users worried about compliance and whether they'd keep their insurance coverage.
Shipped
A compliance projection on the Therapy tab — progress toward the 30-day window, framed as encouragement, never a grade.
Insight
Patients wanted to link smart wearables for richer overnight context.
Shipped
Apple Watch, Oura, and Whoop integrations with a real connect flow and per-source body-response cards on the home screen.
Insight
People wanted control over which metrics lead the home screen.
Shipped
Customizable secondary metrics — including any connected wearable's readings — surfaced right under the nightly story.
Responsive by design
The same story, on the big screen.
Nocta isn't only a phone in your hand. The prototype reshapes into a full desktop dashboard — a persistent sidebar, the nightly story as a hero, and every chart given room to breathe across a two-column layout. Same data, same calm voice, more space to explore.
07 Impact
What it sets out to change
Reduce confusion
by translating raw CPAP data into personalized, plain-language insights people can understand and act on.
Build confidence
by helping users see what's working, what's not, and the one adjustment worth trying tonight.
Support the long haul
through gentle, honest habit-building that keeps people on therapy past the month that usually breaks them.
Interactive Prototype
Beyond the design, I built a working React prototype — running on my own CPAP data, every chart rendered with Chart.js, and AI insights shipped as typed JSON ready for OpenAI's Structured Outputs and the SleepHQ API.