Open House: Experience to connect
Open House is an immersive, interactive experience designed to spark emotional connection among people. Each person shares videos related to the "feeling at home”, a sense of safety, love, and belonging. Their videos appear on the walls, while a new, mixed story plays at the front. With emotional buttons, participants can influence the colors and atmosphere, creating a shared emotional journey. It’s about connection, shared stories, and the universal feeling of home.
Client
Hva
Team
ALINA CLIUCINICOV, CAMERON KIRK, DANIAL ALEMASOUM, DINA OZAEI
Year
2025
Role
Researcher, Project Manager
main challenge
How can we design an environment where people feel emotionally safe and open enough to connect and share meaningful stories with each other?
Statement
"Open House" immersive experience, invites two people to share personal stories of what “feeling at home” means to them. Their individual videos play on the side walls, while a blended story unfolds on the front wall. Emotion buttons allow them to express feelings, changing the room’s color and triggering reflective prompts. The goal is to foster connection, empathy, and a shared emotional moment.
We started our project by exploring TouchDesigner, beginning with the creation of simple interactive elements to familiarize ourselves with the tool. From there, we developed our concept, focusing on connection and real-time immersive interaction. Our goal was to touch people’s emotions and foster genuine connection by encouraging them to share personal stories and collaboratively build a new one, partly through uploading images. We then brought our idea into action by testing it with peers, using collage-making as a method to gather feedback and refine the emotional and interactive aspects of the experience.
In the next phase, we focused on iterating and shaping the experience through a clear, feasible user scenario. Using TouchDesigner, we tested the evolving concept in the immersive lab environment through video-based simulations. To encourage interaction, we integrated physical buttons that allowed participants to express their emotions and actively influence the environment. The concept of “feeling at home” was central to our design, aiming to evoke a sense of safety and belonging. By sharing personal moments, participants connected through shared emotions. Each person contributed a video, which became part of a visual collage displayed on the surrounding walls—forming a shared emotional landscape that deepened the sense of connection.
