Hello! Welcome to my postgraduate showcase. I’m a UX Designer passionate about making technology friendlier, more engaging, and meaningful in connecting people’s everyday lives.
Hello! Welcome to my postgraduate showcase. I’m a UX Designer passionate about making technology friendlier, more engaging, and meaningful in connecting people’s everyday lives.
This project explores whether virtual pets can act as meaningful companions in mixed reality outdoor scenarios.
Loneliness has become a common issue in modern urban life, especially when people travel or spend time outdoors alone. With the rise of immersive technologies such as XR, virtual pets offer a new possibility: they can act as companions that are accessible, customizable, and always present. This project explores how virtual pets in mixed reality can bring emotional support to everyday mobility, making technology more human-centered and emotionally meaningful.
Designing virtual pet prototypes to simulate daily walking with dog. By comparing three conditions – no pet, a generic pet, and an emotionally significant pet chosen by a friend – the study investigates their effects on users’ feelings of companionship, loneliness, and social presence.
Participants: 24 MSc students
Design: Within-subjects experiment, three conditions
Measures: Adapted UCLA Loneliness Scale, Companionship Scale for Artificial Pets, Networked Minds Social Presence Questionnaire. Semi-structured interviews, inductive thematic analysis
Through the gradual iteration and adaptation, the prototype eventually evolved into an MR prototype capable of operating in real-world environments.
Although there were technical compromises with the use of a static dog model, the overall design still met the core purpose of the research and allowed testing of the effects of virtual dogs on feelings of companionship and loneliness in a mobility context.
Walking with a virtual dog in MR scenario
Waiting for the traffic light to simulate daily life
Adding interactions with virtual dog
Leading the puppy across the road
As the results of test, virtual pets can effectively reduce loneliness and enhance companionship in working scenario. Emotional meaning may be more important for long-term interaction. Users also hope that pets will serve both emotional and functional roles.
This study highlights the potential of emotionally meaningful virtual pets to support well-being in XR mobility. Looking forward, there are several opportunities to develop this concept further:
