Wei-Hsin Chen | UX Designer

VR Design

Tao and His Pals: Inspiring Pro-Environmental Action through VR Storytelling

An interactive VR experience that raises awareness of marine pollution by immersing tourists in impactful scenarios. It uses storytelling and choices to encourage reflection and promote pro-environmental behavior.

Experienced Design

Background

Marine environments are under critical threat from tourism-related plastic pollution. Despite being environmentally aware, young tourists often lack the emotional connection or awareness needed to change behavior. UN Goal 14 (Life Below Water) emphasizes the urgency of reducing marine pollution.

About the Project

"Tao and His Pals" is a narrative-driven VR experience designed to empower young UK tourists to care for marine life. Using emotional storytelling and interactive design, users step into the shoes of Harry, a student navigating a tropical beach resort under the guidance of Tao, a wise sea turtle.

Design Process

STEP 1

Synthesize Research, Brief Generation

STEP 2

Ideation, Prototyping

STEP 3

Testing, Tuning, Design Iteration

STEP 4

Validation & Final Design Reflections

Goals

Inspire Empathy Through Immersive Storytelling

Use narrative and character-driven design (e.g., Tao the sea turtle) to emotionally engage users and connect them with the marine environment.

Encourage Conscious Decision-Making

Present users with interactive moral choices (e.g., littering vs. cleaning up) that reveal direct environmental consequences, making their impact tangible.

Educate Through Exploration

Design autonomous, interactive environments that promote discovery-based learning and help users understand marine pollution and sustainability issues.

Promote Reflective Learning

Allow users to experience and reflect on the outcomes of their actions, creating lasting impressions that go beyond surface-level awareness.

Motivate Real-World Action

Bridge the gap between virtual experience and reality by encouraging post-experience behaviors, such as beach cleanups, social sharing, or eco-conscious travel choices.

Persona

👤 Harry is a 22-year-old undergraduate student at Loughborough University.

He's eager to explore the world and relax during his holiday, but he often overlooks the environmental impact of his actions. Although future-oriented and open to new ideas, he struggles to translate his good intentions into sustainable behavior.

🌍 Young Tourist

🧳 Nature-Seeker

📉 Low Eco-Action Awareness

I just want to explore the world, meet new people, and have fun. Me, as an individual, I don't know what to do.

Motivation

to explore and get away from daily routine

to explore new environment

to experience nature and independence

to be independent and make my own decisions

Pain Points

Lacks awareness of environmental impact

Influenced by social norms

Low intention to reduce litter without emotional engagement

Vision Statement

We believe, there is an opportunity to design an immersive Virtual Reality solution for young UK tourists who care about the future and personal growth but lack awareness of their environmental footprint, that encourages them to make more active pro-environmental decisions.

Design Opportunities

Design Principle Opportunities

To create a meaningful and memorable experience, our design was guided by principles that promote long-term thinking, active engagement, and autonomous exploration. These principles ensure that users are not just passive viewers, but curious participants in a journey toward environmental awareness.

Inspirational

Inspire users to image and plan for the future he wants

Engaging

Engaging with objects in the VR to establish greater empathy towards marine life by providing a captivating experience.

Adventurous & Explorational

Empower players with a sense of agency by allowing them to share their journey instead of the following preset steps.

VR Opportunities

Virtual Reality offers a powerful medium to move beyond passive learning. By creating immersive, emotionally engaging environments, VR enables users to feel connected to nature, witness the consequences of their actions, and practice sustainable behavior in a meaningful way. These opportunities help bridge the gap between awareness and action.

Awe & Nature Connection + Ecological Experience Learning

= Pre-environmental behaviour

User Story

🌊

Build Awareness Through Real Encounters

As a young tourist who just wants to enjoy a relaxing beach day, I want to unexpectedly come across scenes of seagulls eating trash and hermit crabs using plastic waste as their homes, so that I can begin to realize how everyday litter affects marine life, even in beautiful places I visit.

🧠

Spark Reflection Through Personal Choice

As someone who doesn’t usually think twice about littering, I want to be given simple but meaningful choices like whether to leave the cup or throw it away, so that I can reflect on the consequences of my actions without feeling judged.

💬

Promote Peer Influence

As a tourist who learns best through relatable social situations, I want to see other tourists picking up litter and have the option to talk with them, so that I can feel encouraged to take part in collective action and understand I’m not alone in caring.

🧤

Encourage First Steps Toward Sustainable Behavior

As someone who wants to do the right thing but often doesn’t know where to start, I want to be nudged toward small eco-friendly actions, like disposing of trash properly or stopping a hermit crab from crawling into a plastic cup, so that I feel empowered to take similar actions in real life.

UI Showcase

Design Iteration

VR Experience Design – Key Iteration Highlights

To improve immersion, interaction, and user awareness in our VR storytelling experience, we incorporated the following UX and spatial design principles during our iterations:

Horizontal & Vertical Alignment

Ensured that important UI elements (e.g. signs, decisions, cues) are placed within the user’s natural field of view (FoV) and sweet spot for comfortable access.
Improved visibility of interactive elements like directional signs and choices (e.g. “Go to the beach” button).

Ensured that important UI elements (e.g. signs, decisions, cues) are placed within the user’s natural field of view (FoV) and sweet spot for comfortable access.
Improved visibility of interactive elements like directional signs and choices (e.g. “Go to the beach” button).

Natural, Complex & Rich Signals

Integrated realistic environmental cues (e.g. signs, objects, shadows, movement) to guide attention and improve presence.
Designed environments that support intuitive navigation without overwhelming the user.

Integrated realistic environmental cues (e.g. signs, objects, shadows, movement) to guide attention and improve presence.
Designed environments that support intuitive navigation without overwhelming the user.

Ambient & Spatial Sounds

Added contextual audio cues (e.g. ocean waves, dolphin sounds, seagulls, environmental chatter) to deepen user immersion and reinforce attention to key elements.
Audio used to create a multi-sensory experience that supports user choices and emotional engagement.

Added contextual audio cues (e.g. ocean waves, dolphin sounds, seagulls, environmental chatter) to deepen user immersion and reinforce attention to key elements.
Audio used to create a multi-sensory experience that supports user choices and emotional engagement.

Depth Perception

Enhanced spatial realism using:
- Relative sizing of objects (e.g. distant vs. close characters or animals).
- Aerial perspective and visual layering to add dimensionality.
Helped users gauge spatial relationships and feel more present in the virtual environment.

Enhanced spatial realism using:
- Relative sizing of objects (e.g. distant vs. close characters or animals).
- Aerial perspective and visual layering to add dimensionality.
Helped users gauge spatial relationships and feel more present in the virtual environment.

Affordance: Intuitive Actions

Designed interaction points to reflect real-world expectations — e.g. placing trash bins next to cups, clickable signs that feel like doors, or icons with clear function.
Made actions like "Pick up the cup" or "Talk to tourists" feel natural and discoverable without needing instructions.

Designed interaction points to reflect real-world expectations — e.g. placing trash bins next to cups, clickable signs that feel like doors, or icons with clear function.
Made actions like "Pick up the cup" or "Talk to tourists" feel natural and discoverable without needing instructions.

Results

👤 User Value

Created a deeply immersive and emotionally impactful VR experience that helped tourists understand their environmental footprint, especially regarding plastic pollution in marine environments.

Evoked emotional empathy toward ocean pollution through storytelling and interactive design.

Promoted behavior change through empathy, using storytelling and interactive design to connect users emotionally with marine life.

Encouraged users to reflect on their environmental impact, promoting behavior change.

🏢 Business Value

Demonstrated how immersive technologies can drive sustainable tourism, offering value to organizations or governments focused on environmental education, tourism innovation, or public awareness campaigns.

Showcased the potential of immersive VR in environmental education and sustainable tourism.

Created a prototype that could scale into environmental exhibits or eco-tourism packages, potentially attracting sponsorships or partnerships.

Built a scalable concept that can be extended to public awareness campaigns and eco-tourism initiatives.

🌱 Personal Value

Strengthened my XR and storytelling skills by designing engaging, purpose-driven content.

Enhanced XR storytelling skills by designing emotionally engaging experiences.

Gained experience in user testing and iteration with emotional metrics, deepening your research and design-thinking abilities in immersive media.

Applied emotional testing methods to improve research and deepen user insights.

Reflection & Learnings

Design for immersive design in virtual environment

Learn

Unlike a traditional UX/UI project, this VR experience challenged me to think beyond flat screens and into fully immersive environments. As I led parts of the design, I had to consider users' field of view, spatial awareness, emotional engagement, and how they interact with virtual space, all in real time. This taught me to approach problems from new perspectives and adapt my design thinking to account for presence, depth, and embodied interaction. Guiding the team through these new challenges helped me grow not just as a designer, but also as someone who can lead confidently in unfamiliar territory.

Reflection

This project opened my eyes to the complexity of immersive design. I realized that creating meaningful VR experiences isn’t just about placing objects in space, it’s about guiding attention, evoking emotion, and creating choices that feel intuitive and impactful. I’m proud of how I helped the team translate abstract ideas (like empathy for marine life) into concrete VR interactions. The process made me more open-minded, detail-oriented, and confident in driving vision across disciplines.

What can I do better?

Next time, I want to involve users earlier to better understand how they naturally behave in VR environments. I also hope to improve how I balance creative direction and team input, making space for more feedback loops without losing momentum. As this was my first VR project, I know there’s still much to learn about immersive storytelling and technical possibilities, and I’m excited to keep exploring this space.

Next Project

FinVoyage- A mobile app empowers users to build better budgets, one goal at a time.

FinVoyage is an app designed for budgeting beginners and those new to personal finance. It helps users set clear savings goals and build healthy budgeting habits to achieve their financial objectives.

An interactive VR experience that raises awareness of marine pollution by immersing tourists in impactful scenarios and encouraging proactive action.