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NY Product Design AwardsEnter Award

Gaming, AR & VR

Aurava: The Future of Collective Grief Healing

Entrant: Zhixian Xu

2025 Silver winner badge
2025

Silver

CategoryGaming, AR & VR
Class / SubcategorySocial Design
Designs for Social Impact
Country / RegionUnited States

The project

Project description.

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Aurava is a living sanctuary for grief—a digital space where mourning becomes a shared, evolving experience.

In a world where traditional rituals are fading and grief is often carried in silence, Aurava makes sorrow visible. Participants enter the space through voice, text, or symbolic gestures, contributing to a real-time emotional map—a fluid, glowing terrain shaped by collective loss.

As grief gathers, rituals unfold organically. A whispered name, a flicker of light, a shared silence—these gestures ripple outward, forming adaptive ceremonies that shift and grow with the emotions of those present.

Grief in Aurava is anonymous, yet never forgotten. Contributions dissolve into a shared archive that evolves over time, preserving mourning not as something static, but as something that lives, changes, and connects us across generations.

Aurava invites us to rethink how we grieve—not as individuals in isolation, but as communities bound by remembrance, healing, and shared humanity.

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