Vykarious
We all have audacious dreams — climb Mount Rainier, swim with sharks. But sometimes life gets in the way. What if we could crowdsource our bucket lists at the end of life, trading our regrets for shared celebration of adventure?
What if we could overcome regret at the end of life? It’s Vibhu Krishna’s dream — one in which we can accomplish more together. Her idea, Vykarious, is a platform that connects people with physical limitations to others who may be able to fulfill their wishes vicariously.
A recent dual B.A. in Studio Art and Medicine, Health and Society, Vibhu’s background is a fascinating blend of medicine and design thinking. Bubbly and warm, she shares the story of how she found herself at that intersection.
“When I was in second grade, my drawing was on the cover of a pediatric journal,” she said. “It was a self-portrait, in which I was wearing a lab coat and stethoscope while painting. I’ve always been interested in the two fields, but it wasn’t until late into college that I really felt like I could do both, without one becoming ‘just a hobby.’”
This passion led her to devour Tom Kelley’s The Art of Innovation, which introduced her to IDEO’s design thinking methodology. Deeply inspired by human-centered design, Vibhu helped redesign her school’s psychological and counseling center, which sparked a desire to find other opportunities to improve the healthcare delivery system through design.
She also kept her eyes open for ways to interact directly with IDEO’s process, and found her way to the OpenIDEO End of Life Challenge. When she posted Vykarious to the platform, the response was enthusiastic and immediate.
The idea develops empathy between young, adventurous souls and those near the end of life. That timeline benefitted greatly from community feedback, including that of palliative care nurse Morgan Meinel. She pointed out that most people’s goal at the very end of life is preserving precious time with loved ones.
A shift to targeting the period in which a user might enter hospice ended up highlighting the idea’s versatility, showing that the project could also support other communities with physical limitations—not only those who are nearing the end of life.
Vykarious even sparked collaboration at her day job. McCann Echo, the advertising agency where Vibhu was interning at the time, was inspired by the idea and provided extensive design and data collection support (beginning with an informal survey of employees, many of whom were thrilled at the idea of becoming Vykings). The next step is to begin working with a developer — potentially also sourced through the End of Life Challenge — to bring the app to life.
Whether it’s hiking Half Dome or climbing Kilimanjaro, Vibhu muses, “Rather than viewing that goal as completely gone if I can’t do it, something that’s never going to happen in my life — the ability to see it as complete when fulfilled vicariously implies a sort of trust in a collective whole.”
The idea evolved from conversations with her parents and grandparents about things they wish they’d done. Although the bucket list is portrayed in pop culture as the domain of the young and adventurous, there are obvious parallels with wishes we may find unfulfilled at the end of life.
She continues: “Through Vykarious, I want to show younger people that this intergenerational interaction can be both exhilarating and sincere, and prove to the elderly or those who are immobile that they are still capable of impacting lives and living their dreams.”
And what dreams! Krishna imagines a tapestry of stories emerging from Vykarious that are woven into an individual’s end of life experience and their families’ memories. Near the end of a person’s life, she says, the goal is to provide the gentlest, most burden-free exit possible. “If the physician is focused on minimizing pain,” she says, “maybe Vykarious could be a part of that by minimizing regret.”
Read more stories about the people, ideas, and moments of OpenIDEO’s End of Life Challenge.
