AT A GLANCE
78% of American Indian/Alaskan Native (AIAN) individuals have migrated from Native culture hubs, leading to fragmented communities & increasing elder isolation.
Utilizing resources from the National Resource Center on Native American Aging (NRCNAA), our team envisioned a "what if?" social media system leveraging AI, VR, & LiDAR to enable AIAN communities to connect, share experiences, & nurture communities rooted in their cultures.
IMPACT
As Product Lead, I:
Managed our product roadmap
Organized communication & distributed team responsibilities
Assembled weekly presentations to foster buy-in
Supported interaction, UI, & VR development
PLATFORM
Mobile, XR/VR
Metaverse Syst.
TIMELINE
Aug – Dec 2023
16 weeks
TEAM
2 UX Designers
VR/AR Designer
MY ROLE
Product Lead
UX Strategy & Research
Prototyping & Testing
Design System Mgmt
RESULTS
THE PROBLEM
Native American communities are fragmenting.
Native culture revolves around connection, & as more Natives (78%) move off-reservation, it becomes challenging to foster inter-generational communication. Why?
Native elders are the primary keepers of knowledge within communities. They share information through oral storytelling, which is difficult to emulate through most modern-day technology.
This vacuum in communication means vital cultural information is lost, leading to cultural extinction.
The loss of communication & culture also mean:
Conversations with Natives across 5+ tribes highlighted how elders shape Native identity.
“I wish I’d learned more from grandma – I lived 900 miles away, so we rarely talked. There’s so much about my culture I have to rediscover on my own.”
– Interview with Stephen, Sicangu Lakota
“Our heritage is passed down through oral tradition: storytelling. That is how I learned what it means to be Navajo, what it means to be Native American: through the stories my grandmother shared.”
– Quote from Patty, Navajo Nation
Our team posed the question:
How might AIAN elders & communities harness technology to stay connected & steward their cultural knowledge for future generations?
THE SOLUTION
We designed Sacred Roots, an accessible social platform built to strengthen connections & gamify cultural knowledge-sharing within Native communities.
The Sacred Roots platform harnesses VR, LIDAR, & AI to bridge generation gaps. A shallow learning curve & real-time guidance make our platform easy to use, even for the less tech-savvy.
Gamified knowledge-sharing & tailored community recommendations help Natives stay rooted in the communities that mean the most – no matter the distance.
HIGHLIGHT FEATURES
Accessibility settings, like screen readers & text size adjustments, can be customized instantly during onboarding to suit individual needs.
Native communities are disproportionately affected by accessibility challenges. To support personal needs, users can adjust their accessibility preferences anytime across all platforms.
Users can test a variety of accessibility options. Changes take place instantly (x2 speed).
An LLM chatbot provides immediate assistance to help users get unstuck.
Inspired by celebrated American animals, a friendly & conversational chatbot helps elders navigate Sacred Root’s features.
The AI recognizes when users get confused or make errors, providing real-time guidance to mitigate confusion.
Users can access the onboarding product tour from the Home screen.
Storytelling tools gamify cultural knowledge exchange & encourage users to share & learn.
Native cultures emphasize audiovisual narratives to share cultural information. Our team surveyed seniors & youth to identify priority features for users to support their communities.
Based on the results, users can craft stories using simple AI & LiDAR tools, enhancing storytelling beyond traditional digital storybooks.
Recording a story.
Scanning an item with LiDAR (x2 speed).
XR & VR communal spaces enable users to connect, play, & learn through immersive experiences.
VR reduces loneliness & strengthens connections, especially among isolated seniors. Users navigate Sacred Roots' VR system through simple gestures, without confusing controllers.
Reward systems & leaderboards encourage users to complete quests with friends, building cultural knowledge & problem-solving skills.
Users can personalize their VR hubs to match their tribe, interests, & personal aesthetics.
The Sacred Roots interface & Companion can be accessed at any point while playing in VR.
With Sacred Roots . . .
. . .all Natives can stay connected – stay rooted – in the communities that give them identity.
DISCOVERY
Our team surveyed & interviewed 60+ Native community stakeholders, identifying 6 key segments to develop personas.
We learned from:
Native Parents
Native Elders
Reconnecting Natives
Non-Native Tribal Relations/Non-Natives
Based on our findings, we developed 6 user personas with 6 distinct stories to foundation our research & ideation.
[Redacted personas] Our team developed 6 personas with associated user journeys to better visualize specific pain points & opportunities for solutions.
The discovery phase framed 3 goals:
IDEATION
200 ideas became 20 storyboards, & 20 storyboards became 5 key features.
Guided by our key considerations, we focused on blue-sky concepts & refined our ideas through a value-feasibility matrix.
Our final prototype features included:
Story/Podcast Creator
Tutorials & Classes
LiDAR Item Scanner & Collections
AI (LLM) Companion Chatbot
VR Sandbox Game
Initial concept grouping & our value-feasibility matrix. We focused on creating & exploring high-value concepts, even those that may have been less feasible in our given timeframe.
We conducted 5 SWOT analyses to draw on the strengths of existing products.
To ensure we built functional & flexible features, we explored current market offerings to identify how they onboarded users & scaled experiences.
This library of knowledge allowed us to design prototypes with seamless feature integrations.
A high-level overview of our sandbox game SWOT, identifying strengths, weaknesses, & how intense the learning curve is.
Xbox Kinect’s gesture-based interaction made VR accessible for users with limited fine motor skills.
VR & sandbox games were exciting, but we faced 2 daunting questions:
How do we make these systems accessible for those with mobility impairments?
How do we make them easy to learn?
We ultimately found Kinect’s camera-driven hand gestures to be the more feasible solution.
Kinect uses simple gestures to complete actions, like swiping & hovering. Interfaces are accordingly designed with larger buttons & interfaces.
Despite Kinect's accessibility, we faced hurdles with VR integration.
VR technology is still emerging, & our team acknowledged that adapting to these systems, especially for seniors, required time.
To bridge this gap, we prioritized integrating small XR features into a mobile app while developing a scaled-down VR prototype to showcase the future potential of the platform.
DESIGN
We split our approach into 3 prongs: mobile application, VR interactions, & a greater supporting ecosystem.
Managing memory efficiently democratized access to VR features.
Limited access to high-end technology on reservations required us to optimize performance to reduce memory load through:
Procedural placement provides a set of if–then rules on feature placements, reducing environmental storage requirements.
Frustum culling prevents objects from outside the camera’s view (blue cone) from rendering, reducing memory requirements.
VALIDATION
We identified & solved accessibility issues through 7 task completion tests.
Testing allowed us to identify & refine:
Key visual accessibility improvements
Areas requiring clearer initial guidance & tutorials
Optic feedback cues needing greater clarity
[Redacted transcript] Utilizing Dovetail allowed us to quickly document & share insights from our tests to adjust.
HANDOFF
We engaged our peers in a final workshop.
Our final proposal culminated in a short workshop, where our products were met with enthusiastic approval.
We also submitted a copy of our project to tribal leaders at the Lummi Nation in Washington state to garner support for building our next MVP.
We aren’t quite finished with Sacred Roots.
Our team remains in talks with the Lummi Nation in Washington to make this app a reality. Working directly alongside our Native peers ensures that culture is embedded in every decision.
We have also submitted Sacred Roots to the 2025 Core77 Design Awards & await our status update in early June.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We created a future rooted in the past.
We are in danger of a less unique America. Sacred Roots is more than just a project or app – It’s a commitment to honoring the traditions of those who came before us & empowering those who will advance their legacy. There are still stories that need to be told, connections that need to be made, & identities that need to be shaped.
The prototype we worked on here is just the beginning. Our team seeks to continue designing a community to preserve Native cultures for the youth of tomorrow.
MY TAKEAWAYS
Blue-sky concepts can help you make products for all user segments
You can’t do everything– focus on the solutions making the most impact
Giving users a platform to make & exchange ideas builds engagement
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