Reconnecting with Loneliness

ABSTRACT

Motivated by personal and shared experiences, this thesis explores loneliness as a complex, lived phenomenon rather than a problem to be fixed. Through research through design, cultural probes, and participatory workshops with young adults, the project investigates how individuals experience, externalize, and reflect on loneliness. This process led to the creation of Lolilola—a tangible toolkit based on the Engage–Express–Reflect–Repeat (EERR) framework. Rather than offering a solution, Lolilola provides gentle prompts and creative rituals that help shift unchosen loneliness toward chosen solitude. Rooted in data humanism, the toolkit translates emotional experiences into expressive, reflective forms. Ultimately, the thesis proposes that by engaging with loneliness through such tools, we reduce its power over us and begin to live more openly with our inner worlds.

How to reconnect with loneliness in a meaningful way?

In the beginning I saw loneliness as just a problem, a big one.

What if I´m always going to be alone, I wish I had someone to rely on, people around me are sick of me..

nobody is gonna be there to help you simran..

My mind was stuck in a loop that made everything seem worse than it really was!

I had a fixing mindset and was trying to find solutions to tackle loneliness.

I will try to bring this very subtle yet significant change in the way you think about loneliness .

over the years people defined loneliness in many ways

In the same survey, I asked people: How does loneliness influence your daily emotions and behavior?

The majority responded with something along the lines of, 'I notice it, but I manage.'

Data Humanism

Instead of presenting my survey results as just numbers and charts, I followed an approach called Data Humanism something I was deeply inspired by my guru, Giorgia Lupi. This approach allows us to see data not just as statistics, but as something more personal, emotional, and deeply human.

Another surprising study from 2003, conducted by Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Kipling, used brain scans to reveal that social exclusion activates the same neural pathways as physical pain. In other words, social pain isn’t just metaphorical , it’s biologically real.

Jar of Rituals

You know fortune cookies, right? I’ve always found it fascinating how something so small and silly can spark curiosity and make you pause, even if just for a moment. I wanted to bring that same sense of surprise and softness into everyday life through the jars.

I combined it with the idea of rituals because rituals create meaning in life by marking special moments. They have the power to transform ordinary actions into meaningful experiences and intentional practices.

Shift of lens

What is Phenomenology?

But phenomenology of loneliness means looking closely at how people actually feel and experience loneliness in their everyday lives.

Simply ,

Everyone has felt lonely at some point,

but how it feels is different for each person.

There’s no single definition that fits all.

So, the experience of loneliness is always personal, unique, and deeply subjective.

LAE vs HAE

High-arousal emotions (HAE)—like anxiety, anger, excitement, or joy, can be both positive and negative. The same goes for low-arousal emotions (LAE) such as sadness, calmness, quietness, or peace.

The thing is, we’re constantly moving, reacting, and staying busy, so high-arousal states tend to feel more familiar, even important. In contrast, low-arousal emotions often catch us off guard. When they arrive uninvited, like a wave of stillness, sadness, or quiet, they can feel uncomfortable. We’re simply not used to just being.

In those quiet moments, it’s natural to feel restless, uncertain, or even a little lost. And that unease can sometimes be experienced as loneliness.

Learning to embrace and process calmness , as something valuable, and not something to avoid can help us grow

The discomfort is natural, but it fades as we get more comfortable with the stillness.

Learning to embrace and process calmness , as something valuable, and not something to avoid can help us grow.

The discomfort is natural, but it fades as we get more comfortable with the stillness.

We focus on the gap between the desired connections and what we actually have.

So we try to find ways to connect with people, .

Instead of doing this we also can see it as a meaningful and necessary experience.

We can see it as a moment to choose to be alone intentionally i.e. choosing solitude.

Choosing Solitude~ Sherry Turkle

MIT professor, researcher, and author Sherry Turkle argues that we often try to fill our quiet moments of solitude with distractions like doom scrolling, binge-watching, or relying on shallow online interactions. Over time, this lowers our standards for real human connection and contributes to the growing epidemic of loneliness.

In summary, when you look at loneliness through a phenomenological lens,

it's a human condition

which we should accept,

which needs to be processed calmly,

and we have to look at it as a meaningful human experience and this experience can be a pathway towards intentional solitude.

Here I found my new direction

I understood that when something becomes an epidemic, we need to change our ways to adapt to it and to better understand it as a human experience.

Design Objectives

So I designed this participatory workshop to explore the lived experience of loneliness that fulfills these objectives not through diagnosis, but through exploration and self-discovery.

Workshop

I created six participatory activities, which are divided in three phases.

These are the charts of other participants. Each person’s chart looked different ~ like a fingerprint.

This again shows that the experiences are so unique to everyone, there can’t be one-size-fits-all solutions.

The EERR Framework

→ It's a structured and repeatable model: that goes like

→ Engage. Express. Reflect. Repeat. (EERR)

Just like Stanford’s and the Double Diamond models help us design products and services, my framework helps people design their own path towards solitude.

The Toolkit

This framework helps people to explore loneliness independently, quietly, creatively, and in their own time.

This leads us to Lolilola, The tangible outcome of my framework.

The idea was to turn the steps of Engage, Express, Reflect, and Repeat into a gentle tool that helps people become comfortable in low-arousal states like calmness and stillness before they shift into negative low-arousal states.

It helps slowly guide them toward an intentional connection with themselves, through noticing moments of solitude.

Through a mixed method of guided externalizing and unguided expressions, users can gain emotional clarity while reflecting on the highs of the journey of loneliness.