How Textile Patterns Find Their Purpose in Everyday Life
November 6, 2026
By Sophie Luk • October 2026
‘Moochitopia: Working Through Anxiety’ is my final year thesis project. It is about designing an immersive experience that eases people’s anxiety, encourages reflection on how anxiety affects an individual and their loved ones, and aims to raise visitors’ awareness of the rising trend of anxiety disorders.
The long-term exhibit installation of ‘Moochitopia’ takes place in a large-scale museum and eases people’s anxiety through meditation and interactive activities. The target audiences of the exhibit are teenagers aged 12-17 and young adults aged 18-25, since these are the groups that suffer from anxiety the most.
For this project’s deliverables, I created an interactive website which introduces the exhibit and created 5 anxiety-easing tools. The rationale of my design is to ease people’s anxiety through multi-sensory engagement, visual communication and interactive design approaches. All design considerations are made based on my research of anxiety-easing related studies.
As a person who suffers from generalized anxiety disorder, I have always hoped that there would be a place in the world that helps people ease anxiety. Therefore, I first came up with the idea of designing a walkthrough tunnel installation which allows people to meditate and obtain inner peace within a public space. As my project progressed, I expanded the scope of my design from a tunnel to a large-scale exhibit.
While doing my project, I discovered a lot of concerning facts about anxiety. From my research, I realized that there are many people around the world who suffer from anxiety disorders like me, and the rising trend of anxiety has become a global problem in recent years, especially after COVID-19. Upon discovering how anxiety can affect people’s health and lives, I decided to use my project to raise people’s awareness about the rising trend of anxiety disorders and encourage reflection on how anxiety affects an individual and their loved ones.
The overarching research question that guides my project’s research is ‘How can design become a tool to help understand anxiety?’. The lenses that shape my view of the topic and inform my thesis project were informed by multiple scholarly resources.
The key ideas, concepts, and theories that shaped my theoretical framework include the definition of anxiety, characteristics and treatment methods for the 7 major types of anxiety disorder, elements that cause and ease anxiety, the rising trend of people suffering from anxiety disorders globally and design elements that can impact the experiences of people with anxiety.
Insights obtained from the findings guided my design experiments and enabled me to understand which sensory and experiential design elements are effective in relieving anxiety. The research findings can also resonate with a lot of people, since everyone experiences anxiety in their lives and there is a rising global trend of people suffering from anxiety disorders. Since experiential design focuses on shaping emotional, sensory, and human-centred experiences, my research findings informed the development of an anxiety-easing immersive experience that not only focuses on functionality but also focuses on enriching the user experience.
Over the past year of working on my thesis project, I have learned a lot of new design skills, such as craft-making, graphic design and video editing skills. I also learned about what to consider and pay attention to when I design an immersive experience, such as the mood transition between exhibit zones, as well as approaches for effective web design and navigation. Overall, the development of my thesis progressed smoothly, thanks to the help I received from my professors. My thesis project is highly relevant to experiential design, since the ‘Moochitopia’ exhibit integrates several experiential design practices such as immersive experience, multi-sensory and interactive design, along with narrative development and engagement. It made me understand that design can be a tool to help understand and manage anxiety.
About Sophie Luk