WALK IN
MY SHOES

An empathy-driven interactive mobile app that allows users to experience life through the perspectives of marginalized individuals.

Pick an avatar, live their day, make choices, earn a score, reflect!

This project was created for the Taiwan International Student Design Competition (TISDC), where the theme was “Diversity.”

1. Discover Stage

Before shaping Walk in My Shoes, I explored the existing ecosystem of empathy-building and educational apps to understand what was already available and where gaps existed.

Competitive Analysis

Most solutions were either too shallow (surface-level empathy) or too resource-heavy (VR or enterprise tools). What was missing was an accessible, narrative-driven, interactive platform that lets users actively navigate scenarios, rather than just watch or read them.

This analysis informed the core direction: Walk in My Shoes should combine interactivity, narrative depth, and everyday accessibility through a mobile app.

2. Empathise Stage

To design Walk in My Shoes authentically, I focused on understanding the lived experiences of individuals from marginalized communities. Since the project engages with sensitive identities, I relied primarily on secondary research from credible global sources, alongside reflective exercises such as empathy mapping and journey mapping.

Disability and Accessibility: Reports from the World Health Organization and UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs provided key insights into how systemic barriers, from inaccessible transport to social stigma, impact daily life beyond physical limitations.
Religious Minorities: The Pew Research Center (2021) study on global restrictions of religion highlighted how subtle discrimination, stereotypes, and fear of judgment shape minority identities in everyday spaces.
PCOS and Body Image: Research from the National Institutes of Health and World Health Organization emphasized how medical dismissal, societal beauty standards, and misinformation around PCOS contribute to both physical and emotional burdens.

This research helped us build the backstory of the personas used in the app.

Empathy Map

Avatars as a result of the empathise stage

3. Define Stage

After synthesizing insights from research and empathy-building exercises, I refined the core challenge into a clear design problem:

To create an interactive experience for students and young adults with the purpose of educating them about the struggles of marginalized individuals and fostering empathy, that measures success by the depth of emotional connection, user reflection, and increased awareness of diversity and inclusivity, and that provides users with a score based on metrics such as accessibility, agency, and other inclusivity-related factors.

Target Audience

Young adults & students: To increase awareness and sensitivity.
Educators & institutions: For use as a teaching and training tool.
Organizations: To foster inclusive culture through experiential learning.

4. Ideate Stage

To quickly generate a wide range of ideas, we used the Crazy 8’s ideation technique before finalising the idea for walk in my shoes.

Visual Identity and Theme

Theme: Empathy, diversity, and perspective-taking.

Tone: Serious yet approachable, educational yet engaging.

Colors: Deep Purple & Maroon (Represent empathy, seriousness, and inclusivity.)

Warm Neutrals: To humanize the experience and keep UI approachable.

Contrasting Highlights (teal, pink): To mark user decisions and gamify feedback.

Typography:Clean sans-serif typeface for readability.

User Flow

Ideation of app features

Interactive Narratives combined with Gamification & Progression

Users earn badges or progress markers by completing stories.Encourages consistent engagement while rewarding

empathy-building.

We chose the metrics Self-Advocacy, Safety, and Emotional Well-Being because they capture the core needs of marginalized individuals.

Self-advocacy reflects the importance of agency, Safety ensures a sense of protection and respect, and Emotional Well-being acknowledges the psychological impact of exclusion.

These metrics gave us a sensible framework to guide our ideas and measure whether the experience truly fosters empathy and inclusivity.