Pulse: Echoes of Humanity

Immersive Capstone

Theme

Immersive Experience

Immersive Storytelling

Escape Room

Role

Experience Designer
(Narrative, Interaction & UX)

Timeline

9 months

Skills Learned

Narrative Design, UX/UI Design, Audience Activation, Client Management, Adaptability and Flexibility

Skills sharpened:

Flexibility, interdependent time management, big picture thinking, leadership.

Problem

Moody College of Communication wanted to transform high-traffic public spaces into immersive experiences that would meaningfully showcase the power of storytelling in the spatial era. Traditional signage and static displays struggled to capture attention, communicate the college’s interdisciplinary identity, or create memorable moments for diverse audiences—ranging from prospective students to faculty, alumni, and visitors.

Solution

Design a 5–10 minute immersive installation for a public-facing campus space that uses interactive storytelling to explore “The Art of Connection: Storytelling in the Spatial Era.” The experience needed to be participatory, accessible, visually compelling, and shareable—while fitting within real-world constraints around space, audience flow, safety, and technology.

My Role

As an Experience Designer, I was responsible for transforming the client brief into a cohesive narrative framework, participant journey, and interaction logic across a public-facing immersive installation. My role focused on ensuring the experience was intuitive, accessible, and engaging within a public, high-traffic environment, while shaping the narrative concept into a clear and coherent user experience.

Key Responsibilities

Our Response

We created Pulse: Echoes of Humanity, an immersive experience that explores the essence of humanity through the lens of a rogue faction known as the Metadynes. Participants engage in interactive zones that focus on human traits such as connecting, investigating, supporting, and dreaming. The experience aims to restore humanity's lost connection by studying participants' interactions and responses to various stimuli, including light, sound, and touch. This innovative project is a student-produced initiative that combines technology and human connection to create a multi-sensory journey.

Interpreted the client’s theme, The Art of Connection: Storytelling in the Spatial Era, into a narrative that could be experienced physically and emotionally rather than explained didactically. The intention behind this theme is to explore how storytelling influences and shapes our understanding of media and disciplines in the spatial era.
Designed the participant journey for the lobby floor of Moody College, considering audience flow, engagement time, and clarity without the need for facilitators or obvious signs.
Collaborated with teammates across roles such as sound, light, media, and systems architecture to ensure narrative consistency across other rooms while adapting the experience to real spatial, technical, and accessibility constraints outlined in the brief.

Key Contributions

Participant Journey Mapping

Created a detailed user journey map outlining each phase of the experience–from onboarding, to exploration, to offboarding.

Identified key touchpoints, user goals, emotional states, and potential pain points to ensure the experience felt coherent and intentional rather than confusing or overwhelming
Designed the experience to fit within a 10-15 minute engagement window while still allowing moments of reflection and agency

View Pulse User Journey Flow

Usibility Testing & Playtesting

Playtest of the floor I was responsible for: the Landing Zone, where participants first encountered the experience.

We ran multiple playtests to understand how people actually moved through and made sense of the experience. Watching participants interact in real time helped reveal moments where the story felt unclear, where interactions caused hesitation, or where engagement dropped off.

These observations guided iterative changes to the design. They helped us refine onboarding moments, clarify interactions, and adjust pacing so the experience felt intuitive rather than instructional. Throughout this process, I was especially focused on balancing clarity with emotional impact, making sure interactions supported the story without feeling mechanical.

After each playtest, I synthesized participant feedback and shared key takeaways with the team, helping shape our next design decisions and refine the experience as a whole.