Nurobodi
Affective Design | Phonetics | Digital Wellbeing R&D | Emotion-Aware AI | Interaction Prototyping
#AffectiveDesign #EmotionAI #UX #Interactive #SpatialDesign #Systems #DigitalWellbeing
Overview:
Nurobodi is my long-form research and development initiative exploring how adaptive audiovisual environments can support mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. Founded in 2017, it bridges affective (emotional) design, sonic interaction, colour and sound perception psychology, and mindfulness to prototype interactive systems that facilitate emotional and cognitive alignment. The work is increasing exploring vocal-resonance as a key driver for integrative shifts of cognitive-somatic awareness.
Research Focus Areas
1. Affective Resonance & Sound-Colour Integration
Investigating how audiovisual frequencies - sound and light - interact to shape physical, emotional and cognitive resonance.
2. Paralinguistic AI & Emotion Recognition,
Exploring how vocal cues (tone, prosody) can be interpreted, analysed, & synthesised to create more emotionally attuned AI systems.
3. Human-in-the-Loop AI Design
Creating responsible innovation frameworks for affective AI systems that keep humans central within causal decision-making processes.
4. Digital Wellbeing Applications
Translating affective design research into practical tools for mood regulation, stress reduction, self-reflection and cognitive enhancement through interactive audio and visual resonance environments.
5. Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Internships
Working with industry partners to to co-facilitate practice-based research within Nurobodi's active R&D projects, developing technical capabilities while contributing to innovation in affective resonance design, computing and human-centered AI interaction design.
Nurobodi Research & Development Methodologies
Vocal Resonance Interpretability/Learning/Synthesis - Phonetics/Empirical/Quantitative/Qualitative/Embodied/Disembodied
Prosodic/Vocalic dataset curation - Ensuring responsible sourcing and diverse representation
Human-centered evaluation - Prioritising human experience over pure technical performance
Iterative prototyping - Testing multiple data sets on emerging model architectures
Explainable AI (XAI) - Designing for white-box/black-box A/B testing increasing AI decision-making transparency and explainability
Key Nurobodi INdustry Collaborations
CSIRO Partnership: AMBER AI R&D Project
Led design and project management for AMBER—an ethical AI chatbot prototype developed in collaboration with CSIRO Data61. The project explored human-in-the-loop approaches to responsible AI, with a focus on explainable decision-making and emotional intelligence.
Dr. Justine Lacey, Research Director of Responsible Innovation at CSIRO:
"Cy's ability to synthesise complex ideas from our multidisciplinary teams at CSIRO and RMIT was instrumental in the development of AMBER... The UX design team at CSIRO Data61 were extremely impressed by Cy's work. The simple and intuitive user interface highlighted his mastery of human-centered design... He explored possibilities that could influence future industry standards for ethical AI applications."
CareerDC Industry Internships: R&D Supervision
I’m currently partnering with CareerDC Internships for industry-based supervision of postgraduate students/researchers from multiple Universities in Australia including Melbourne University, UNSW, and Monash University across:
Prosodic and Vocalic Analysis
Data science
Biomedical and Pharma
Business analytics
This interdisciplinary research culture is advancing Nurobodi's core research in emotion recognition, affective AI, and therapeutic applications of resonance-based design.
Emerging Research for Downstream Applications & Use Cases
Therapeutic Contexts:
Mood regulation and stress reduction tools
Cognitive enhancement through audiovisual stimulation
Accessibility applications for neurodivergent users
Commercial Applications:
Customer experience design with emotional intelligence
AI voice assistants with prosodic awareness
Brand environments optimized for affective impact
Research Contributions:
Novel methodologies for emotion recognition
Frameworks for ethical AI development
Datasets for affective computing research
“This internship transformed my general perception of AI voice generation, which has far more applications from voice cloning. My impression of the upper bound of AI voice has been overturned — from the flattened, monotonous, robotic voice by typical text-to-speech models to emotionally rich and high-fidelity customisable humanlike voice that ultimately constitutes a user-AI interaction loop”
Nurobodi Key Takeaways
8+ years of dedicated research in affective design and affective (emotional) Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
CSIRO-validated approach to human-centered industry-based AI design
Career-DC Industry Work integrated learning research and development supervision
Supervision of Design/STEM postgraduate researchers advancing interdisciplinary applications
Industry accelerator recognition from CSIRO and Generation AI
Practical applications spanning therapy, wellbeing, and accessibility
Nurobodi as an affective research, design and service development startup demonstrates that design can be both emotionally intelligent and ethically grounded—creating technology that serves human wellbeing, not extracting from it.