3. Conclusion


Despite the demographic transformations that have swept the world which include the constant changing of residential addresses to abroad, people will always feel attached to their old environment, family, and home country.

An important finding is that although people are choosing to relocate their lives abroad for numerous reasons, the need for maintaining a sense of attachment and belonging to the people and places that they have come from are fundamentally important for the wellbeing of the movers.

The design of a new long distance communication tool can help support and enrich the needs of attachment and belonging between people who stay away from their familiar environments. This can be achieved by communicating a sense of emotional connection between person and person or person and place through the design.

The design of this tool could address people such as international students that are typically feeling the effects of homesickness and nostalgia to more serious degrees than other immigrants.

The design can be supported by the internet in a way that it can address the many young people living and studying abroad that are typically using the internet for their education purposes.

The design should address the notion that the longer the geographical distances that are travelled to live in foreign countries usually implies a higher risk of homesickness or nostalgia. Where in relation to this geographical distance, the design could accentuate the specific location the direction in which the origin country is located. This communicated information could trigger an emotion connection between the person and their family or hometown.

This particular finding is supported by the idea that current long distance communication tools are missing some experiential qualities such as cardinal direction and distance that can also bring an emotional affect to people. This idea is supported by the findings in the several conversations I had with international students living abroad.

In a design that can physically gesture towards the direction of people or places that you feel nostalgic or homesick for, it is my belief that a new type of long distance communication tool could bring more value to people experiencing the pains of living apart from their families and homes in a subtly reminding way. This can be especially applicable for international students like me, but also applicable to anyone that desires to be reminded of feeling attached and belonging to their family or distant hometown.