When Technology Meets Tenderness

I didn’t come into the world of AI because I wanted to sound more “intelligent” or cut down on manual work. I came into it because I had a question:

How do we scale presence?

As someone who built her own brand from scratch, crafted every candle label by hand, wrote every product description like a love letter, and designed post-purchase flows that felt like real conversations, I wasn’t looking for efficiency. I was looking for amplification, I wanted to keep what made my brand special, while letting the system carry the weight I no longer could.

But what happens when the system becomes the voice?
That was the real question and it’s where this story begins.

The First Betrayal: When AI Felt Hollow

It was a simple automation, a thank-you email after someone purchased a gift. I fed the AI some prompts, gave it a few examples, and let it generate the copy.

It came back fast it was clean, grammatically correct and on-brand in tone.

But when I read it.. I felt nothing.

It was a receipt, not a recognition it was technically perfect and emotionally vacant, and that’s when I realised: just because something functions, doesn’t mean it feels.

Designing for Feeling, Not Just Flow

This was the shift, I started approaching every journey like an emotional arc, not just a user funnel. People weren’t moving from point A to B, they were moving through states.

Doubt to trust, curiosity to clarity, hesitation to commitment, excitement to regret (or loyalty, depending on how we show up).

So I threw out the default templates and I asked:
What is this moment really about?
What emotion lives here?
What needs to be mirrored back?

That became my architecture.

The Framework I Didn’t Know I Was Using

I later realised I had developed a silent framework, something I’d always applied instinctively, but now with AI in the mix, I made it explicit:

Every AI-enhanced journey must pass through three gates:

1. Is it clear?
   If the mind doesn’t understand, the heart won’t trust.
2. Is it clean?
   Energetic clutter, over-explaining, emotional leakage all need to go.
3. Is it kind?
   Kindness isn’t about being nice, it’s about emotional attunement.

These aren’t just UX checks, they’re reality checks and every time something felt “off,” I could trace it back to one of these missing elements.

What AI Was Getting Wrong, And Why It Wasn’t AI’s Fault

Most people think AI’s job is to mimic humans.

It’s not.

AI’s job is to interpret signals and reflect intent, but most of the time, the intent isn’t defined, it’s metric-defined, and when you start from metrics, you get output that performs, but doesn’t connect.

That’s why so much “personalisation” out there feels hollow, because it’s not personal, it’s predictive.

I didn’t want prediction, I wanted presence.

So I stopped feeding AI with data sets and started feeding it with facts, patterns, symbolic language, pacing, pause and rhythm.

That’s when everything changed.

Mapping Emotional States, Not Just Customer Segments

In traditional marketing, you segment people by demographics, behaviours, age, location, click history.

I took a different approach.

I mapped journeys based on timelines. Instead of who they were, but how they felt.

Were they just browsing, unsure of their needs?
Had they tried a competitor and been disappointed?
Were they shopping for someone they love, and nervous to get it right?

Each emotional state required a different energetic response.
Some needed reassurance, others validation or just space.
So I trained the system to recognise states and traits.

AI as a Translator

One of the biggest shifts I made was seeing AI not as creator, but the translator.
I was the architect, the one holding the blueprint of the brand’s emotional resonance, AI was there to translate my intention into scalable expressions and if the translation felt off it wasn’t AI’s fault, it was a signal for me to get clearer in what I wanted to express.

So I learned to write prompts like I write poetry with motion, emotional direction and strategic softness, and suddenly the system started giving me responses that felt real and alive.

Testing for Humanity: How I Knew It Was Working

I never asked “What’s the open rate?”

I asked, “Did someone reply?”

Because that’s how I knew it was working.

When people write back to an automated email saying, “This made my day,” or “I felt like you were speaking directly to me,” – that’s the metric.

That’s the real conversion, because it means the tech didn’t get in the way it means the system transmitted feeling, and that’s rare.

The Temptation to Let Go And Why I Didn’t

There were times I was tired, behind schedule, pressed to automate fast, and the temptation was there: just let the system run, skip the organic layer, prioritise speed over emotion.

But every time I did that, the journey suffered not because it broke, but because it disconnected.

So I made a vow: If I wouldn’t say it to a friend, I won’t let it go live.

That’s become my internal barometer and that’s how I calibrate.

Because automation without intention is just noise and I’m not here to make noise, I’m here to create resonance.

What I Tell Founders and Designers Now

If you’re afraid that AI will strip away the human touch, hear me:

It only will if you abandon it first.

AI doesn’t erase presence, but it will reflect whatever energy you bring.
If you feed it sterile input, you’ll get sterile output, and if you embed emotional truth, it will echo that too.

So build with feeling.
Prompt with precision.
Architect with care.

Let AI scale your hands, but don’t hand over your heart.

The Philosophy Behind Every Journey I Build

I live by this fact:

People don’t want to feel sold to.
They want to feel safe to choose.

Everything I create from every flow, sequence to every message is built around that.

AI can help people feel safe, but only if we design for safety and we don’t forget what it means to be human in the invisible moments.

That’s what I do.

I build systems that feel like someone is still there, even when no one is.

Because at the end of the day, technology is just a mirror,
and the person always remains The Source.