“WHISPER + THE ECHO CARRIAGE” began as an exploration of how sound can transform everyday routines into moments of connection. The idea was inspired by my daily subway commutes spaces where people share time and presence, yet remain strangers. I wanted to reimagine this ordinary experience as a shared, reflective journey shaped by collective voices and memories.
ROLE - Sole designer responsible for UX design, interaction systems, visual direction, prototyping, technical implementation exploration.
SCOPE - Original Product & Cross-Device Interactive Experience Exploration
DURATION - 5 months
TOOLS - Unity, Figma, Miro, After Effect, Photoshop
Project Planning
Research
Information Architecture
High-Fidelity Design
Implementation & Development
Usability Testing & Iteration
Modern loneliness is increasingly recognized as a public health issue, especially among younger generations. Despite living in dense cities and shared spaces, people often feel emotionally disconnected. Commuting, in particular, amplifies this quiet isolation—crowded yet solitary.
FIELD NOTES: THE ANATOMY OF A COMMUTE
FIELD NOTES: THE ANATOMY OF A COMMUTE
Modern loneliness is increasingly recognized as a public health issue, especially among younger generations. Despite living in dense cities and shared spaces, people often feel emotionally disconnected. Commuting, in particular, amplifies this quiet isolation—crowded yet solitary.
The Headphone Shield
Passengers use headphones to create a private auditory space, turning sound into a tool for withdrawal within shared public environments.
Transient Intimacy
Brief sounds—an overheard laugh, a sigh, a phone call—create fleeting connections between strangers before disappearing moments later.
Collective Silence
Passengers share the same space, yet remain emotionally separate, moving through parallel experiences without interaction.
Unnoticed Soundscapes
Train doors, rail vibrations, announcements, and footsteps create a shared auditory environment that often fades into the background of daily routine.
REFLECTION ON EVERYDAY COMMUTING EXPERIENCE
Public spaces feel shared physically but not emotionally
Commuters use headphones to isolate themselves.
The train car is filled with micro-moments (laughter, sighs, phone calls) that go unnoticed.
Train rides create a natural rhythm of sound, but people tune them out.
People bring traces of their day into the train( fatigue, mood, stories) in silence.
These observations shaped my decision to use sound as the primary design medium. Not as background, but as a way to surface the quiet presence that already exists within shared spaces.
Modern loneliness is increasingly recognized as a public health issue, especially among younger generations. Despite living in dense cities and shared spaces, people often feel emotionally disconnected. Commuting, in particular, amplifies this quiet isolation—crowded yet solitary.
Research indicates that auditory experiences such as music or ambient sound are strongly tied to memory, emotion, and social bonding. For example, the activation of oxytocin and endorphins through group musical experiences suggests that sound alone can create feelings of connectedness and presence.
The transformative power of music, Frontiers in Neuroscience (2023)
The subway is a shared experience without shared connection. Passengers occupy the same space, movement, and soundscape while remaining largely anonymous.
WHISPER explores this tension by using sound to surface traces of human presence, transforming a transient commute into a temporary community built through listening rather than speaking.
Rooted in the growing public health concern of modern loneliness, the project explores how shared sound and memory can create subtle forms of connection between strangers.
WHISPER: THE ECHO CARRIAGE grew out of this concern. Using the tools I knew about world building, interaction, and spatial design—I hope to create a shared space where people could feel connected through small traces of everyday life.
The project takes the form of a cross-device experience between a mobile app and an interactive Unity environment. Through this system, Whisper bridges real-world moments and virtual space through participatory sound. The goal is to evoke shared empathy and a quiet sense of presence, reminding users that even in solitary routines, they are part of something larger and human.
How can participatory sound design turn ordinary recordings into a collective environment that fosters presence and connection?
WHISPER fosters connection through shared presence rather than direct interaction. Users contribute small traces of everyday life that accumulate into a collective environment, transforming individual moments into a shared emotional landscape.
The Whisper mobile app lets users capture fleeting sound moments from daily life and pair them with short reflections. Each recording is customized through color and motion, forming a unique “whisper” that later shapes the shared train world in The Echo Carriage.
Built in Unity, The Echo Carriage is a first-person train environment shaped by sounds contributed through the mobile app. Using a handheld tuner, players reveal passengers formed from real-world recordings, each representing a unique Whisper. Rather than pursuing objectives, players explore, listen, and reflect as the train gradually fills with traces of anonymous presence.
UPLOAD PORTAL – RECORDING
“Capturing real-world moments”
This is the heart of Whisper’s mobile experience. Recording a sound is the core action that produces the “whisper” in the game.
STEP 1
STEP 3
STEP 2
Users can customize how their whisper is represented in the Echo Carriage, giving each message a unique presence.
Single-action record button to reduce friction and encourage spontaneous use
These features allow the app to function as a personal diary, helping users record and reflect on moments from their day - no matter meaningful or random.
PAST RECORDINGS + PLAYBACK
Helps users see their journey over time.
List of past recordings gives users a sense of timeline and memory accumulation.
A TRAIN FILLED WITH "WHISPER"
Players use a handheld tuner to scan frequencies, gradually revealing the presence of a whisper. As the signal strengthens, sound, text, and visual cues emerge, it invites the player to pause and listen.
TUNNING TO A "WHISPER"
Players use a handheld tuner to scan frequencies, gradually revealing the presence of a whisper. As the signal strengthens, sound, text, and visual cues emerge, it invites the player to pause and listen.
Navigation & Discovery — Discovering whispers
This screen introduces the exploration state of the Echo Carriage. The tuner device acts as the player’s primary interaction tool instead of buttons or menus, discovery is driven through diegetic interaction, making the experience feel embodied and intuitive.
Feature 1
Subtle cues for nearby whispers: Markers on the map tab of the device pulse lightly, prompting players to investigate without overt markers.
Feature 2
Diegetic tool instead of UI overlay: The tuner device sits in the player’s hands as an in-world object, reducing traditional UI clutter and reinforcing immersion.
Passenger Interaction & Tuning - Listening to whispers
This screen transitions the player into the focused listening state.
Each passenger embodies a transformed “whisper”, seated or standing figures with distinct, abstract head designs shaped by the sound’s characteristics and the user’s chosen customization.
By holding the tuner close to a passenger, the user actively “tunes in” to their whispers, blending interaction, sound, and text visualization to reveal a personal fragment.
Feature 1
Visual differences between passengers:
Each passenger’s form will change based on the audio parameters (volume, texture) & customization in app, giving each whisper a distinct identity and making the space feel alive.
Feature 2
Progressive disclosure:
Sound and text emerge gradually as the tuner aligns with the passenger’s frequency, reinforcing effortful discovery rather than instant playback.
The title Whisper draws inspiration from sound sequences and frequencies, reflecting the game's core mechanic—where players traverse the world using a handheld radio device to catch "whispers."
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