SPACE FOR GRIEF
A Ritual of Release, Transformation,
and Interconnection
︎︎︎ Research
︎︎︎ Concept
︎︎︎ Visual Design
︎︎︎ Experience Design
︎︎︎ Programming
︎︎︎ Physical Prototyping
︎︎︎ Room Installation
︎︎︎ Photography
︎︎︎ Videography
︎︎︎ Exhibition
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and Interconnection
︎︎︎ Research
︎︎︎ Concept
︎︎︎ Visual Design
︎︎︎ Experience Design
︎︎︎ Programming
︎︎︎ Physical Prototyping
︎︎︎ Room Installation
︎︎︎ Photography
︎︎︎ Videography
︎︎︎ Exhibition
Space for Grief is an immersive installation that fosters community through shared, embodied expressions of grief and compassion.
Loss and grief are natural parts of life, yet the emotions they bring are often difficult to express. Those who are grieving may struggle to articulate their feelings, while supporters may fear saying the wrong thing. Together, these challenges can create distance, leaving both sides feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to connect.
Space for Grief creates a safe space to acknowledge loss and grief as natural parts of life, where shared emotional expression can offer support and relief. The immersive installation turns personal loss into a collective, embodied language, letting the body speak when words fall short. Participants release emotion by squeezing a crochet ball, sending a light pulse that connects with traces left by others. These pulses merge into a living network of shared experience, where each person becomes a glowing node within the collective.
Drawing on cross-cultural practices and nature, the project explores how design can create space for vulnerability, care, and meaningful connection in modern communities.
Loss and grief are natural parts of life, yet the emotions they bring are often difficult to express. Those who are grieving may struggle to articulate their feelings, while supporters may fear saying the wrong thing. Together, these challenges can create distance, leaving both sides feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to connect.
Space for Grief creates a safe space to acknowledge loss and grief as natural parts of life, where shared emotional expression can offer support and relief. The immersive installation turns personal loss into a collective, embodied language, letting the body speak when words fall short. Participants release emotion by squeezing a crochet ball, sending a light pulse that connects with traces left by others. These pulses merge into a living network of shared experience, where each person becomes a glowing node within the collective.
Drawing on cross-cultural practices and nature, the project explores how design can create space for vulnerability, care, and meaningful connection in modern communities.
The installation captures pressure,
duration, and squeezing rhythm, translating
evolving emotions into light.
Research
Developed during my eight-week final thesis at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, the project began with extensive fieldwork and in-depth research on grief, including over 20 interviews with both experts and people who had experienced loss. Through the interviews, three main insights emerged:
Insight 1: Fear of saying the wrong thing leads to silence. Out of caution, people often hold back their words, resulting in important feelings and connections being left unspoken.Developed during my eight-week final thesis at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, the project began with extensive fieldwork and in-depth research on grief, including over 20 interviews with both experts and people who had experienced loss. Through the interviews, three main insights emerged:
Insight 2: Grief is not only emotional but embodied and spatial. Both the body and the home carry absence, turning everyday life into a reminder of loss.
Insight 3: For many, feeling comforted and safe comes from being part of something bigger. In modern life, people often find this sense of presence in nature, a place to rewild, find peace, and experience themselves as a small yet connected part of a larger cycle and community.
Research through drawing: 50 participants
illustrated where they feel most alive and present.
illustrated where they feel most alive and present.
Alongside the interviews, I also explored analogous research as well as a biomimicry approach that looked to nature as mentor — particularly mycelium, decay, and decomposition. Drawing inspiration from nature’s cycles of transformation, renewal, and the underground mycelial networks that nourish and connect ecosystems beneath the forest floor, mycelium became a metaphor for loss and grief as something deeply interconnected rather than isolated: a shared experience sustained through community, connection, and collective care.
Drawing inspiration from nature by investigating the microscopic
structures and processes of decay and decomposition.
structures and processes of decay and decomposition.
Overall, research informed four guiding design principles for the prototyping and co-creation phase: Embodied Language, Safe Space, Community, and Nature. This led to the following design challenge:
How might we help people embrace death in modern life as a vital part of transformation by reimagining rituals that celebrate both endings and new beginnings?
User testing during prototyping, evaluating
the squeezing interaction and pressure-responsive
light feedback.
the squeezing interaction and pressure-responsive
light feedback.
Prototyping and Testing
The main challenge during prototyping was to find an embodied language that felt natural and meaningful. This required more than 25 prototypes before arriving at an interaction that genuinely resonated with people and felt emotionally impactful rather than merely symbolic. The many prototyping iterations revealed that softer, more shapable objects worked best to express emotions, and that the most satisfying interaction was squeezing balloons filled with play-doh. The most important step was therefore to figure out how to make simple play-doh-filled balloons feel meaningful.
Exploring a spectrum of embodied emotional expressions through varied interactions, including holding, squeezing, braiding, pulling, and throwing.After various co-creation sessions and an inspiring conversation with an old man at a wool shop, who started crocheting after his wife passed away and connected with the community in town through this activity, I tried crocheting myself but struggled significantly. I quickly realized I could not do it on my own, so I started new conversations and began building a crochet community. Crocheting became an important part of the process, bringing people together to collaboratively create the soft ball used in the installation. This shared, slow, and tactile practice fostered conversation, care, and emotional connection, reflecting the project's aim to create a safe space where grief can be held collectively and supported by community.
Finally, soft wool and technology come together in a handcrafted crochet ball with a hidden pressure sensor inside. Every squeeze is captured and transformed into growing light visuals, turning pressure, rhythm, and movement into a simple visual expression of emotion and energy. The installation stores many individual rhythms as unique pulses that connect within the installation, forming a collective network of light where all pulses resonate together.
The most important moment during prototyping and user testing occurred when a participant squeezed the soft crochet ball, saw the lights evolve, and immediately started crying. They said it felt exactly like what they would have needed when their father passed away: a warm, supportive hand to hold and squeeze. That moment confirmed that the interaction was truly resonating.
At the heart of this project lies a simple, embodied interaction. A handcrafted crochet ball with an embedded pressure sensor records each user’s unique pressure and squeezing rhythm, translating it into responsive, growing light visuals. These light visuals are not only momentary, but are remembered within the installation: traces of pressure, rhythm, and emotional release accumulate over time, creating a living network of shared experience. Like a mycelium network beneath the forest floor, the released energies of individual participants move through a connective system, intertwining with the emotional traces left by others. Each person’s release becomes nourishment for a collective landscape of care, where vulnerability is held, echoed, and shared.
Though technically minimal, the squeezing gesture is deeply meaningful: research shows that touch and hand pressure can calm the nervous system, support emotional regulation, and create a sense of comfort and agency. By turning emotion into light, the interaction allows users to express grief and compassion without words, reducing isolation and fostering connection. The ritual-like, self-paced interaction offers an accessible way to connect with oneself and others, transforming individual emotion into a shared, embodied experience of compassion and presence.
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