Independant Project
Client
VR Design · Participatory Research · Immersive Storytelling
Role
Thesis Project · VR Design · Participatory Research · Immersive Storytelling
Industry
2024 (Thesis Project)
Year
Unity, Blender, Adobe Audition, Photogrammetry tools, Oculus Quest, Notion
Tools
An immersive, research-led VR experience exploring generational trauma, identity, and memory through the objects carried during the 1947 Partition of British India.
Partition is often remembered in statistics — millions displaced, thousands killed — but rarely in the small, intimate details that shape generational memory. What She Carried reframes this history through personal narratives and symbolic objects passed down through families affected by the 1947 Partition of British India. Developed as my thesis project, the experience uses immersive storytelling to explore how trauma is carried, remembered, and transformed across generations. It seeks not to reconstruct history, but to hold space for its emotional residues.
Capture intergenerational memory through participatory storytelling
Create an immersive, affective environment grounded in real narratives
Use VR to honor silence, fragmentation, and subjective memory
Challenge archival and nationalist narratives of Partition through lived experience
Phase 1: Participatory Research & Oral Histories
I began by conducting long-form interviews with families across Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, focusing on personal stories tied to everyday objects — things like keys, shawls, photographs, and diaries. These items became emotional anchors, portals into generational memory. Rather than frame participants as "subjects," I invited them to co-shape how their stories would be represented — centering consent, care, and agency throughout the research process. The goal wasn’t historical reconstruction, but speculative remembrance: a layered, intimate archive of what was held onto and what was lost.
Phase 2: 3D Scene Design & Spatial Storytelling
Using Unity and photogrammetry, I designed surreal yet grounded environments that held these personal artifacts in suspended, symbolic space. Users move slowly through these rooms — each anchored in a different story — with time dilated to evoke pause, presence, and reflection. Photoreal textures were combined with minimalist forms to avoid overwhelming users, allowing the emotional weight of the objects to lead. This was not a puzzle or a reenactment, but an invitation to witness and feel.
Phase 3: Sound, Embodiment & Trauma-Informed Design
To create an embodied sense of presence, I layered spatial audio with ambient soundscapes and direct excerpts from interviews — each voice telling not just what was remembered, but how. Sound became the connective tissue between physical space and emotional resonance. Drawing from trauma-informed design principles, the experience avoids graphic reenactments. Instead, it centers fragmentation, silence, and absence — acknowledging that some stories are incomplete, and some wounds resist narration. This approach fostered reflection without retraumatization, allowing users to experience memory without spectacle.
What She Carried is both a digital memorial and a speculative archive — one that honors the small, emotional truths often left out of official histories. It demonstrates the power of participatory design, not just to tell stories, but to build spaces where collective memory can be held with care. For me, it was a lesson in designing with empathy, cultural sensitivity, and deep intentionality — creating technology not to dazzle, but to remember.
