Yubo
Freelance · Design
Buddy AI: a premium, context-aware companion for Yubo with three playful non-human personas.
Buddy AI is a premium concept for Yubo: three playful, non-human companions, Echo, Whisper and Spark, that act as supportive sidekicks for 18 to 25 year olds without standing in for real friendships. I concepted and designed the feature end to end, from where it lives in the app to how each persona sounds.
The brief was to feel native to a social app rather than bolted on. Buddy has a single entry point, reads the module it's opened from, labels everything it says as AI and stays inside Yubo's existing moderation, so it nudges people back toward each other instead of replacing them.
Choosing a Buddy
The overlay is the only control surface. Three tiles carry the whole setup: tapping one selects or switches persona, and tapping the active tile again turns Buddy off. That removes a separate toggle and keeps on, off and switch inside one gesture. The active state uses Buddy yellow on the ring, name and trait so it reads at a glance on a dark sheet.
Buddy AI
Talking to it
Buddy Mode is voice-first and context-aware. Opened from a chat, it can answer questions about that chat, like "this chat is lacking energy, why?", and replies out loud in the persona's voice. The character is animated in a near-static pose so it feels present without pulling focus, captions stream word by word for people with sound off, and a context chip states exactly what Buddy can see.
Cues at natural moments
In a chat, Buddy waits. An idle ring around the chip fills during a pause, and only then does one suggestion appear, tinted to the persona and labelled as AI. "Use opener" drops the text into the composer rather than sending it, so the person always edits and sends their own message.