👋 Hi, I’m Gia
Between culture and code, I trace stories that deserve to be felt.
I’m a designer who starts with concepts that matter—often born from overlooked cultures, quiet rituals, or “strange” perspectives others might miss. I believe good design doesn’t just solve problems—it warms, connects, and respects the people it touches.
I specialize in XR, UX/UI, and interaction design, using tools like Unity, AI, and Adobe Suite to build experiences that blend technology with empathy. My work often explores how digital space can carry human temperature, especially in cultural storytelling and participatory experiences.
About Me
XR PROJECT
UX PROJECT
Others
Phone: 510-662-2330
Email: gia0105gia@gmail.com
SOCIAL CLOCK
Background & Motivation
In many families, especially in collectivist cultures, parents tend to define success by how closely their children follow the “social clock”—graduate on time, get a stable job, buy a house, get married. Anything that falls outside this rhythm often gets labeled as “risky,” “selfish,” or “unrealistic.”
I’ve seen friends give up creative dreams for “secure jobs,” not because they lacked talent or drive—but because they couldn’t carry both their dreams and their family’s expectations.
This project explores that invisible weight.
Design goal:To build a VR experience that invites empathy from parents who struggle to understand why their children feel so lost, stuck, or tired—despite seemingly “doing fine.”
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Problem Statement
How might we help parents recognize the invisible emotional toll their children carry when they try to meet societal expectations over personal aspirations?
Target users
- Primary: Traditional-minded parents who prioritize stability and social expectations.
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Secondary: Young adults navigating between dreams and family expectations.
Design Methodology
I chose VR because I wanted users—specifically parents—to embody the child’s perspective. This isn’t just storytelling. It’s role-switching.
Key methods:
User POV shift: The viewer enters the mind of a recent graduate trying to pursue their dream career.
Multisensory stress simulation: Dual phone calls from both parents layered with rent reminders, insufficient funds, and emotional texts.
Choice-based branching: Users must choose between following their dream or accepting a “stable” job, each path leading to different emotional consequences.
Temporal storytelling: Scene jump from present crisis → 3 months later in an office → late-night burnout moment → past echoes reappear via messages.
Design insight:
Empathy is stronger when users aren't just shown what it's like—but made to decide under the same emotional pressure.
3. Storyboard
4. Experience Flow
Scene1: Login + Context Briefing (Role Setting)
After putting on VR, the user will see a login interface.
Purpose: To establish a sense of role substitution and make it clear that "you are not you - you are your child".
Scene 2: Intro Scene: Child's room, award-winning background
Enter the virtual scene: Child's small rental house, the room is simple but tidy,
There is a yellowed certificate of honor (such as design competition award, artistic specialty, etc.) on the bookshelf, guiding users to "grab it".
Purpose: Use touch + emotional memory to activate the child's dream and the parents' initial affirmation, creating "hope" to contrast the subsequent "reality".
Scene 3: Pressure Builds
You, the user, sit in a small apartment. Two phone calls ring at once—both from your parents. You check your bank balance: not enough to pay next month’s rent. Outside, the world is fast. You feel slow.
Scene 4: The player makes a choice (turning point)
Visually, two "future options" appear like buttons:
Choose Dream: Mother's nagging and persuasion, unable to enter the next scene (implying the difficult situation of newly graduated students)
Choose Stability: The player can switch scenes
Scene5: 3 months later: Tired nights in the office (silent compromise)
Everything is quiet in the office late at night.
Colleague knocks on the door: "I'm leaving, please help me with the remaining report~ Thank you!"
The user sits in front of the screen, and pops up meeting schedules, KPI tracking tables, team chat records, morning 8 daily reminders, etc.
The user clicks to close each dialog box (psychologically like turning off his own voice).
The last message is from a friend who once pursued the design dream with me. She found a job in the dream design company and asked about your current situation.
Reflection and Insight
In the process of designing this project, I kept asking myself:
When did we start to use "social rhythm" to measure a person's life value? Who decided the timetable?
Some of my real feelings:
Empathy depends on "standing in" experience.
Many parents do not love their children, but they have never really "walked into" their children's life rhythm. VR helped me create such a space: let them see, hear, and feel the state of "everything is fine on the surface, but the heart is anxious and silent".
Those words we call "care" are actually silent pressure.
Two phone calls, a balance reminder, and a few "for your own good" suggestions, put together is a dilemma in the eyes of a young person. I don't need to reason, I just need to restore this process, and the experience will speak.
The moment of choice is the moment to see the heart most clearly.
Dream or stability? The hesitation before choosing is actually a dialogue of self-identification. I found that the closer to the "real choice", the more it can resonate with people's hearts.
Future
This project is not just an emotion simulator, but more like a starting point for "understanding". I hope it can:
Application direction:
Family education tool
Used in school or family communication courses as an exercise of "empathy" to help parents and children find the resonance point of dialogue.
Public exhibition interactive device
Put it in exhibitions, design festivals, and public spaces to let more people experience: the reality of "not daring to fail" and the tenderness of "being bound by love".
Home mobile version
Simplified to a version that can be used in mobile VR, so that family members can have a deep silent conversation in the living room.
Research and social survey tools
Provided to design researchers, psychologists or social organizations to explore behavioral responses and stress cognition in "emotional decision-making".