For Those Who Don't Have Tomorrow

This project began with a curiosity about how design might foster empathy. Initially, I wondered whether empathy-driven design could inspire emotionally-driven action—encouraging people to engage in more thoughtful, human-centered behavior. As the project evolved, my focus shifted from nudging behavior to creating space for emotional connection.

The question became: How might I, as a designer, create a design that helps people empathize with each other?

2. Research Process & Insights

Defining Empathy

I began by exploring what empathy means through academic papers and books across disciplines such as moral philosophy, neuroscience, social psychology, and design theory—alongside select literary works that illuminate human emotional experience. I looked at how empathy is framed and defined across these intersecting fields. This gave me a working understanding of empathy as a multifaceted concept shaped by emotional, cognitive, and contextual factors.

Mapping Context & Themes

To explore how empathy functions in different contexts, I conducted a rapid prototyping exercise: six design responses in seven days. I imagined a range of emotional, physical, and social situations where empathy felt essential—from environmental crises and public spaces to sensory limitations and mental health struggles. Each prototype responded to one of these scenarios through installations, visual interventions, or product concepts designed to evoke empathy in specific moments or interactions.

I approached each scenario by trying to empathize with the people and situations involved—wondering whether someone who identified with the scenario would feel understood through my design. Through this, I realized that it’s impossible to create something that resonates with everyone.

This process helped me reflect on how empathy is entangled with spatial, sensory, and emotional cues—and how the design of an experience can shift attention, invite care, or expose indifference. It marked a shift from treating empathy as a static emotional goal to understanding it as a situational, relational phenomenon shaped by context.

Rethinking Empathy: From Problem-Solving to Storytelling

Based on my initial research, I formed a hypothesis about what makes people empathetic and created prototypes to test it. But I quickly realized that people had different interpretations of empathy, and some even felt uncomfortable with my approach. I had been treating empathy as an isolated design problem to solve—an outcome I could deliver—rather than an experience to invite.

I began to understand that empathy wasn’t something I could engineer from the outside. It required vulnerability, personal connection, and a willingness to engage with others beyond the surface.

Around the same time, I started to question my own role as a designer. I encountered critiques of the design field’s tendency to treat all challenges as problems to be solved—especially in emotionally or socially complex contexts. That reflection helped shift my focus. Rather than designing for empathy as a final goal, I began designing through personal narrative. By embedding my own story within the work, I moved from directing empathy to inviting it—through memory, shared vulnerability, and emotional resonance.

3. Ideation & Narrative Development

Conceptual Direction

After the rapid prototyping phase, I began to focus more intentionally on what kind of emotional experience I wanted this project to invite. I asked myself: What stories do I feel drawn to? What do I want people to feel when they interact with this design—not just as users, but as people?

The theme I kept returning to was loss. While my early ideas touched on mental health and moments of crisis, I didn’t want to define the project solely by those experiences. Instead, I began shifting the focus toward emotional connection—toward the quiet, unsaid things people carry with them after loss.

Object Meaning & Emotional Resonance

As I developed the concept further, I began to consider how objects themselves can carry emotional resonance. Many people associate certain objects with personal memories—a sound, a texture, or even something as simple as a brand of cookies that reminds them of someone they love.

In the first iteration of the design process, I focused on finding an object that could help people engage with someone’s personal story. I noticed that the telephone naturally embodied the gestures of listening and speaking, which aligned closely with the emotional goals of the project.

For me personally, the telephone surfaced most naturally. It was a direct link to my grandfather, who lived far away—I often spoke with him by phone. After his passing, the memory of those calls lingered. The object held a quiet but enduring emotional meaning, and I wanted to offer others a similar moment of reflection through interaction.

Concept Prototype

This led to the start of the concept prototype. I began imagining a design that could give people space to share those stories—quietly, indirectly, and on their own terms.

During this phase, I became drawn to the symbolism of the telephone box. I saw it not just as a physical enclosure, but as a space where people could speak sincerely—a setting where vulnerability feels safe and natural. The enclosed setting offered a quiet intimacy that aligned with the emotional tone I hoped to create—a moment to pause, to remember, and perhaps, to say something that had been left unsaid.

The idea of using a specific symbolic object began to take shape—but at this stage, the focus was still on building a narrative experience around empathy, memory, and shared vulnerability.

4. Iterative Prototyping & User Testing

Iteration: Testing Form & Emotional Perception

In the first iteration, I explored how form, sound, and interaction could shape emotional perception. I experimented with combining a telephone and nostalgic elements like cassette tapes, aiming to evoke memory and reflection through familiar but reimagined materials.

However, user testing revealed that while the cassette tapes initially triggered nostalgia, they also confused the core interaction. Some participants described the prototype as “a cassette player shaped like a telephone,” which blurred the emotional clarity I was aiming for.

As a result, I chose to simplify the interaction and focus solely on the telephone. This shift helped strengthen both the symbolic clarity and the emotional tone of the project.

Iteration: Narrative, Memory, and Social Context

In the second iteration, I began shaping the narrative direction more intentionally. I introduced cherry blossoms—a deeply personal symbol tied to the memory of my grandfather—and paired it with a vintage 1980s public telephone design from Seoul. That era was not only meaningful in Korean history—it was also the time when my grandfather was still alive. This combination aimed to ground the interaction in both personal memory and cultural context.

I developed a storyboard that traced the user journey, and conducted user testing to explore how people engaged with the narrative and emotional tone. The feedback helped me better understand how narrative cues, object symbolism, and cultural references shaped people’s perceptions and responses.

From these insights, I created a system map that visualized the user’s emotional flow through the experience. This helped clarify the structure of interaction and informed the next iteration.

Iteration: From Narrative to Function

In the third iteration, the focus shifted from narrative development to refining the physical and technical implementation. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was unable to conduct in-person user testing—so I concentrated on translating earlier insights into a tangible, cohesive experience.

I embedded an Arduino inside a 3D-printed replica of a 1980s Seoul public telephone—an object chosen for both its cultural familiarity and personal significance. I then adorned it with cherry blossoms I had designed, bringing the emotional narrative into a tactile, visual form. When participants lift the receiver, they hear my personal story about my grandfather and are then invited to leave a message in response.

Although I couldn’t observe live user interaction at this stage, the iteration helped me solidify how the emotional, symbolic, and functional layers of the design would come together in the final installation.

5. Bringing the Narrative to Life

The final installation brings together narrative, form, and interaction into a cohesive experience—one rooted in personal memory, cultural resonance, and emotional participation. It features a 3D-printed replica of a 1980s Seoul public telephone, embedded with an Arduino to control sound playback and recording. Cherry blossoms—recalling the day they fluttered all around when my grandfather passed—adorn the telephone, gently framing the moment.

When participants lift the receiver, they hear my recorded story about my grandfather—a memory of connection, distance, and unspoken words. After listening, they’re invited to leave a message in response. Some share their thoughts and personal experiences in response to my story. Others reflect quietly or speak directly to loved ones they’ve lost. In this way, the installation becomes a shared emotional space—intimate, anonymous, and deeply human.

Rather than asking people to empathize with a specific issue, the work creates space for reflection—inviting each person to bring their own emotions and memories to the experience. It does not prescribe what to feel, but instead offers an interaction in which meaning is formed personally, relationally, and quietly.

The emotional setting and interaction are explored in the thesis trailer, which situates the installation in a cemetery—specifically inspired by Korea’s National Cemetery, where my grandfather is laid to rest—and illustrates how memory and empathy unfold through the interaction.

Along with the trailer, I turned my thesis paper into a book.