Yuna · SHRM 2025
Everyone’s first question about AI mental health care is whether it feels human. The booth answered in wood and moss, before anyone asked.
SHRM is the world’s largest HR gathering — 20,000+ benefits leaders in the San Diego Convention Center, every major provider competing for their attention. Into that hall came Yuna: the first fully AI-powered mental health coaching platform, exhibiting at its first trade show ever. Pure Exhibits built the 30 × 30 island at Booth #3219 — arched, planted, softly lit — so the environment itself made the argument the category needs most: this kind of care is warm.
A new category, an invisible product, and a first booth
Yuna arrived at SHRM with three problems stacked on top of each other. The product is an app — there is nothing to hand a visitor. The category is brand new — 24/7 AI mental health coaching with no therapists, no appointments, no waiting — and benefits leaders evaluate it against EAPs and telehealth they already understand. And this was Yuna’s first booth anywhere, at the biggest HR event on earth, surrounded by incumbents with decades of floor experience.
Underneath all three sat the category’s real objection, the one nobody says out loud at a booth: AI care sounds cold. A conventional tech-forward build — screens, gloss, hard edges — would have confirmed it. The design brief inverted the instinct: make the space itself the counter-argument. If the booth felt like a wellness studio — wood, greenery, soft light, room to breathe — then the first thing an HR leader learned about Yuna, before a word was exchanged, was that this kind of support feels human.
“This is Yuna’s very first booth at SHRM. This is a 24,000 person HR show and we’re really excited to exhibit. Never before in history has there been an anytime 24/7 access — just pull out your phone, push a button — access to mental health support.”Grant Winns, Founder & CEO, Yuna Health
A wellness studio, not a vendor booth
An Arch Is a Threshold
The defining move was to give the booth a doorway. Two sweeping wood-slat archways framed opposite entrances — the front one reading “You’re Building the Culture. We’re Powering the Care.” — so that stepping in felt like entering somewhere, not drifting across an open corner. On a floor of wall-less vendor islands, the act of crossing a threshold did quiet work: it marked the moment a passer-by became a visitor.
Warm on Purpose
Every material choice answered the “AI is cold” objection: natural wood over laminate gloss, living greenery over vinyl, soft pooled lighting over show-floor glare, open sightlines over corridor walls. The booth read as a modern wellness studio — and for a buyer whose real question is “will my employees actually use this,” the environment was the first proof point.
The Moss Wall Demo
The organic centrepiece was a living moss and greenery wall with a demo screen embedded in it — AI coaching, experienced through headphones, framed in something alive. For many HR leaders it was their first-ever session of instant, judgment-free support, and the setting did as much persuading as the software: technology presented as part of care, not apart from it.
A Sentence That Stops Traffic
Aisle-facing pylons carried one line — “Therapy isn’t broken, access is” — beside lifestyle imagery of a person and a phone. The towers bought vertical presence against bigger neighbours, but their real job was faster: state the entire thesis in five words, legible at walking speed, so the booth had made its argument before anyone slowed down.
The Story in Sequence
Inside, a messaging wall walked the analytical buyer from hook to detail through three inset panels — “Try A New Kind of Mental Health Support,” “24/7 Instant Access,” “Real Support. On Demand.” Curiosity to comprehension in one pass, without a pitch — and with the specifics a benefits leader needs to put Yuna beside a traditional EAP on a spreadsheet.
A Halo, Not a Logo Box
Overhead, a circular sign with a soft LED halo carried “The smart benefit for mental health” over the island. On an expo floor dominated by hard-edged rectangular rigging, the round, warm form read differently from three aisles away — wholeness and continuous care as geometry, and a beacon that made Booth #3219 findable in a hall of 20,000 people.
Experience the booth
A walkthrough of the Yuna 30 × 30 island at SHRM 2025 — through the arches, past the pylons and lounge, to the living moss wall where the AI coaching demos ran.
The build at a glance
The smart benefit, made tangible
The bet was that the environment could do what a pitch cannot: dissolve a category objection on contact. HR leaders walk SHRM evaluating hundreds of vendors at speed, and a new kind of benefit gets one pass to register. The archways converted that pass into a visit — cross the threshold and the space had already said the important thing. Nobody had to be told AI care can feel human; they were standing inside the proof.
The moss wall did the converting. Headphones on, screen embedded in living greenery, an HR leader ran a real coaching session — for many, their first experience of instant, judgment-free support — and the consistent reaction was surprise followed by recognition. The sequencing outside-to-in mattered: “Therapy isn’t broken, access is” hooked from the aisle, the panel wall supplied the evaluative detail, and the lounge held the longer conversations that followed.
As Grant Winns put it: “Yuna isn’t therapy, it’s a lifeline when traditional support isn’t available. It meets people where they are, whether that’s 2:14 a.m. or in the middle of a spiral, offering real-time, judgment-free support.” A first-time exhibitor in a brand-new category left SHRM having stood shoulder to shoulder with the incumbents — because 900 square feet argued the promise in material, light and living green.
Explore our island exhibits
The same venue, the opposite palette — invisible reliability made visible with live racks and green status light in a 20 × 20.
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View Case Study → Google Cloud Next 2026 GenpactA 20 × 20 that spent its floor space on enclosed meeting rooms — conversation quality over passing traffic.
View Case Study →A first booth is a design problem
A debut exhibitor gets one show to look established — architecture that reads as intentional, messaging that lands at walking speed, and demo moments that convert curiosity into conversation. Pure Exhibits designs and fabricates custom exhibits from 10 × 10 inlines to full-hall islands for first-time exhibitors and category creators at SHRM, HLTH, CES and beyond — every build 100% pre-assembled and photo-approved before it ships, with fixed, transparent pricing.