USER EXPERIENCE COMPUTATION RESEARCH ARCHITECTURE ABOUT

In Their Paws

Step Into Their Paws, Experience the Cause of Our Actions.MIT XR Reality Hack 2025

Try it out:

[Date]
2025.01
[Location]
Cambridge, MA
[Team Member]
Jingfei Huang, Grace Mai, Jianzhe Zhu, Zhening Zhu
[Project Type]
Hackthon Project
[Role]
Game UX Design, XR Development (Unity), 3D Asset Support, Storytelling

Problem

Red pandas (and countless other species) face threats from habitat loss, hunting, climate change, and pollution.
Many people aren’t aware of how human-driven actions—like deforestation, plastic waste, even simple flashlights, and highway building—directly impact wildlife lethally.
Traditional media (articles, documentaries) can inform but often fail to deliver an emotionally gripping experience that catalyzes personal responsibility and action.

However humans can never change if they can't empathize with the extinct animals immersively.
This is an Immersive XR+VR Narrative where the user steps into the paws of the endangered animals and personally experiences the dire consequences of human activity.

Aim & Purpose

The aim of this project In their paws is to raise awareness about the critical challenges faced by endangered animals and to inspire actionable change toward sustainability. By leveraging cutting-edge mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies, the project immerses users in the lives of these animals, helping them experience the impact of environmental degradation, habitat loss, and human activities from a first-hand perspective. This experience seeks to foster empathy and understanding, encouraging users to reflect on their role in promoting sustainability and conservation. By bridging technology and environmental education, the project highlights the importance of preserving biodiversity and underscores the interconnectedness of all living beings and ecosystems.

XR Experience

1. Instead of passively watching, participants “live” the red panda’s life. This immersive perspective heightens emotional resonance.

2. When the red panda consumes plastic fruit or is hit by a car, users directly see the results of such threats. This goes beyond empathy into a sort of “virtual embodiment.”

3. Immediately after the VR scenario, users can see data visualizations tying their in-game experiences to real-world statistics, encouraging them to connect the dots between fictional VR hazards and actual global crises.

Key Offering

Using Vision Pro’s capabilities for realistic overlays and transitions, participants seamlessly move from a physically staged environment to a VR forest without imposing a role on them (and lose the immersive feelings).
By centering on the red panda’s doomed-to-death final journey, the experience maximizes emotional impact, fostering empathy for endangered wildlife.
Post-experience data visualizations link user actions (plastic, road hazards) to real-world facts—helping participants leave with concrete knowledge.
The architecture can be adapted for other species or environmental scenarios, broadening the reach and reusability of the experience.

What's Next

As XR becomes more immersive and accessible, this new way to learn about sustainable futures and the impacts of harmful actions will also be expanded to different audiences, along with expanded topics—from living as endangered animals to endangered cultures, and so on.
Future enhancementsAs XR and AI advance, the experience could feature hyper-realistic animal behaviors, branching storylines, and adaptive environments that respond to real-world data (e.g., live climate metrics).
This continuous update could make each session unique, reflecting actual ecological changes in real-time.
Personalized impact reports Participants could receive personalized “impact reports” showing how their daily habits—like reduced plastic usage—directly affect species conservation.
These insights, backed by global data, could spur long-term behavior change and foster a sense of accountability.
Broader adoption and influence With broader cultural adoption, the XR+VR experiences might become go-to references for media, policymakers, and corporations, illustrating the cost of inaction with visceral immediacy.
Public pressure could drive legislation for stronger protections, pushing environmental responsibility to the forefront of policy debates.