AIRA: A cycle-aware health companion for living with PMOS

PMOS (polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, renamed from PCOS in 2026) is a hormonal and metabolic condition. It shows up differently for everyone: irregular cycles, insulin resistance, fatigue, weight changes, acne, mood swings. There's no cure. It's managed, day to day, through habits.

AIRA began as a project for a UX class on habit change. We chose PMOS because it lives almost entirely in daily habit work, and because the people living with it are badly served by what already exists. It was also personal. I have PMOS, and one of my teammates is diabetic, so we knew a lot of this firsthand.

PMOS is hard to manage because it's hard to even understand. It presents differently in everyone, so figuring out how it shows up in one person is its own ongoing task. Managing it also means changing several habits at once (food, sleep, movement, stress, cycle), and they all affect each other.

The tools don't help much. Each habit lives in a separate app, and none of them connect. Even wearables only capture a slice, like steps and sleep, not the fuller picture of cycle, nutrition, and symptoms that PMOS involves, and they remain out of reach for a lot of people. So people track constantly and still can't see how it all fits together, and most eventually fall off.

Since there's no cure, managing PMOS comes down to spotting patterns: what sets off symptoms and what actually helps. Connected data could show those patterns, but when it's spread across five apps, nobody can see them.

We ran a short survey (25 responses, 13 from women with PMOS) and three interviews, alongside secondary research grounded in behavior-change models like Fogg and COM-B. A few patterns kept coming up.

• Asked when their symptoms feel worst, 11 of 13 said it “varies too much to tell.” PMOS doesn't run on a predictable schedule

• The two most common reasons habits fell apart, tied at 9 of 13: “I start strong but can't stay consistent” and “life gets too busy”

• Most-requested support: gentle nudges during low-energy moments, and cycle-phase guidance

The interviews explained why. People dropped habits on the days they had no energy, which with PMOS is a lot of days. They were also tired of apps that sent cold, generic reminders.

“Most period apps don't really cheer you on.”

On existing trackers like Flo and Clue

One of those interviews changed how I approached the cycle-tracking work.

“Most things feel like tasks. I'm trying to think of my cycle like seasons, four different weeks.”

Maitreyi, interview participant

I kept thinking about this. She was describing a different way to think about her cycle: four phases, each with its own energy and needs, moving through the month like seasons.

It also helped with a problem I'd been stuck on. Most period trackers assume a predictable cycle, but irregular cycles are one of the most common PMOS symptoms. When your cycle doesn't fit the 28-day model, the app stops being useful, and it can make you feel like you're the problem. Seasons get around that. Instead of counting down to a date, the app focuses on how each phase feels, which works whether your cycle is regular or not.

On the seasons framing

The four phases of the menstrual cycle are often described as inner seasons, a framing rooted in the body's infradian rhythm, the roughly monthly hormonal cycle that shapes energy, mood, and metabolism. Adjusting habits to each phase, known as cycle syncing, was popularized by Alisa Vitti, who developed it while managing her own PMOS.

Drag the wheel to move through the cycle. The season, the reading and the light all change together.

Three decisions shaped the product. All of them came from the same finding: people with PMOS usually quit tracking on the days the app makes them feel like they're doing something wrong.

I designed the cycle tracking, activity, nutrition and the Learn tab. Cycle tracking is where the seasons idea turned into actual screens.

The main screen shows where you are in your cycle as a ring that fills up, colored by phase, with a short note on what that phase needs: rest in winter, more energy and focus in summer. The guidance sits right next to the data so you always know why you're logging.

The toggle is on the phase screen. The same cycle data shows up as Seasons (Winter through Autumn, with energy and needs for each) or as Phases (menstrual, follicular, ovulatory, luteal). The data behind it stays the same.

The Learn tab

The seasons idea only works if people understand it, so the app has a tab for that. The Learn tab (the Daily Pulse) has short reads tagged by phase: cycle science, PMOS basics, a daily fact and a quick tip. This keeps the tracking screens clean and gives people a place to learn more if they want to.

Nutrition

The nutrition screen started out like every other food tracker: a calorie budget and macro rings to stay inside. I took the budget out. A number to stay under reads like a grade, and on a low-energy day that's the last thing you need. Now the top of the screen says what your phase asks for instead. In the luteal week that's steady meals, some protein and slow carbs, plus one easy add, like Greek yogurt or a handful of nuts for the afternoon dip. You can still type your meal or just say it out loud.

Activity

When you log a workout, the app ends with an encouraging message instead of a number. Our research showed people with PMOS stop tracking when it feels like they're being judged. The activity screen confirms the log and explains how that movement helps during your current phase.

Nudges

Nudges also show up outside the app, as a lock-screen notification and a home-screen widget. Both are timed for when your energy is usually low, not a fixed hour.

Test it with the women we interviewed. We designed AIRA from research but never tested it with users. One interview pointed me toward the seasons framing, and I built the app around it, so I'd want to know if it works for other people too.

A dashboard that brings it together. Next I'd build a home screen that shows patterns across cycle, food and activity in one place, so you can see how they connect without switching tabs.

Comparing cycles. The CHI research on menstrual data found that people really want to compare cycles side by side. This matters even more for irregular cycles, where one averaged view isn't accurate.

Improving the nutrition screen so it's more personal to each phase and each person.

One participant mentioned in passing that she'd started thinking of her cycle as seasons. Her comment pointed me toward a framing I then built out across the app. The biggest thing I learned was to design around irregular cycles instead of treating them as something to fix.