Story of Your Life

A VR-assisted system for exploring alternate future selves through immersive simulations, sensory feedback, and reflection.

Inspiration

People often feel a “gut feeling” that their life should move in a different direction but struggle to understand what that change might be.

Current tools such as journaling, personality tests, and career research rely on imagination and reflection. They rarely allow people to experience what a different life path might actually feel like.

At the same time, our bodies respond to situations before we consciously interpret them. Changes in physiological signals such as heart rate can indicate stress, excitement, or emotional engagement.

We designed this project to explore a simple idea:

What if people could experience possible futures and observe how their body reacts to them?

What it does

Story of Your Life allows users to explore possible future life scenarios through immersive simulations.

Users select a scenario such as:

a different career
moving to a new city
a major life transition

The system places them in a simulated moment from that possible future.

During the experience, biometric signals such as heart rate are monitored to identify emotional responses.

After the simulation, users write reflections. The system visualizes biometric signals alongside the reflection timeline to highlight moments of strong response.

Over time, users can compare experiences and identify patterns in what environments or life paths resonate with them.

How we built it

We built the prototype by combining UI design and generative AI.

Interaction Design

We designed the user flow in Figma, structuring the experience into three steps:

Select a life scenario
Experience the simulation
Reflect on the experience

Generative AI Simulations

We used generative AI to quickly produce visual environments representing different life scenarios, including workplaces and living environments.

This allowed us to create immersive simulations without building full VR worlds.

Sensory Data Layer

We simulated biometric signals such as heart rate to represent physiological responses during the simulation.

These signals are displayed as a timeline so users can see when their emotional response changes.

Reflection Interface

Users record thoughts after the experience. The system connects reflections with biometric signals to support interpretation.

Challenges we ran into

Identifying which sensory signals are useful for reflection. Many physiological signals exist, but not all of them provide meaningful insight into emotional responses. We had to decide which signals, such as heart rate or stress indicators, could help highlight moments of engagement without overinterpreting the data.

Another challenge was building immersive environments within hackathon time limits. Using generative AI allowed us to rapidly create believable scenarios.