Yeigo

Helping people fit and use mobility aids safely through AR

MIT Reality Hack

MIT Reality Hack is one of the largest and most influential XR hackathons globally - it brings together hundreds of designers, engineers, and researchers to prototype the future of spatial computing. Over an intense three-day sprint, two members of Refract Studio, Lauren Cason and Sam Jones, joined forces with Akilah Martinez, Aya Umoh, and Sade Korbieh to explore how AR could support safer, more confident mobility.

What began as a shared set of family experiences quickly became a fully working prototype. In just 72 hours, the team designed, built, and demonstrated Yeigo: a bilingual, community-rooted mobility tool leveraging smartphone sensors and Snapchat Spectacles for real-time height adjustment and posture guidance.

Yeigo went on to win both major categories of the hack: the overall Gold Prize and the Founders Lab Grand Prize.It was a special team, and a powerful validation of how meaningful innovation can emerge from clear purpose and shared experience.

Sunset over a mountain with snow-capped peaks and layered ridges.

55% of walkers are set incorrectly

Most people buy a walker off a shelf and guess the height. Without guidance, the setup is often wrong, leading to strain, instability, and preventable injuries.

The Problem

47,000 injuries each year

Improperly fitted mobility aids contribute to tens of thousands of ER visits annually. A small adjustment when you first start using one can prevent future falls and strains.

24% of adults over 65

Nearly a quarter of older adults rely on mobility devices, yet most receive little instruction on how to use them safely.

A mountain peak at sunset with a warm orange sky and dark silhouette of mountain ridges below.

Yeigo started with our own families. Lauren had just helped her mother adjust a to a walker after an ER visit. Akilah had guided her grandmother through using a cane. Aya was recovering from posture related pain. All three experiences showed the same issue: people so often begin using mobility aids with no clear guidance.

Akilah grounded the project in community and language, giving it its name: Yeigo, which means “keep going” in Diné bizaad. Lauren shaped the clinical framing from a nursing perspective. Together, the team defined three goals from the outset: help people fit their walker to the correct height, help them walk with safer posture, and keep the experience community oriented and culturally grounded.

To achieve this, Yeigo uses a smartphone paired with Snapchat Spectacles, combining IMU data, depth sensing, and floor-plane detection. This identifies a user’s natural wrist position, draws an accurate AR height line for adjusting the walker, and triangulates posture while walking. The same sensor stack detects common risks such as leaning forward, looking down, or standing too far back from the walker, and offers gentle, bilingual cues in a nurturing narrative format.

The result is a calm, community-rooted prototype built from lived experience, giving people clearer, safer steps from the very beginning.

Our Approach

Follow the Yeigo Story

Building Yeigo was a deeply meaningful collaboration for all of us. You can read more about the project in the Navajo Times and the Albuquerque Journal. The Refract team, together with Akilah, Aya, and Sade, is exploring next steps, so stay tuned for more as we continue on our journey.

The Yeigo Team