Group Members: Takneeah Cook, Maureen Gast, Ciera King, Molly Muse
Integrity Statement: I pledge on my honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized assistance on this assignment/exam.
Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1j0BIqmwhNVCepRQ4frpwMFnT8Aw26998vzzNaXroo3M/edit?usp=sharing
Prototype: https://www.dropbox.com/s/enr8kffpnsf4m72/ENG%20281%20Prototype.pptx?dl=0
Formal Proposal:
This proposal is for the U.S. Department of Education’s EdSim Challenge. Our objective is to create a virtual reality experience that informs users of mental illnesses, specifically anxiety. Our VR experience will teach users about the challenges that people with anxiety face, such as stigma from our society and challenges with everyday activities that people without anxiety find easy or menial.
When the user is placed within our VR project, they will see through the eyes of people diagnosed with anxiety. They will experience what their characters sees, thinks, and hears on any given day in their anxiety filled life. Additionally, the user will experience the stigma from the society around them by interacting with other people within the VR experience. While interacting with the other characters, the user will hear responses such as “you’re overreacting.” “What’s wrong with you?” and “You just need to calm down.” Combined with these responses, the user will see the unempathetic expressions from the other characters.The user will have the chance to make choices regarding their character’s life, changing their anxiety experience.
Many educational games on the market today focus on either pure simulation or pure game play. For simulation games, the user only experiences the life of their character without any choices to make. The user simply sees what’s around them without any interaction with the environment or characters. An example of this would be the New York Times VR app (The New York Times). In the NYT VR app, the user selects certain stories to experience (The New York Times). One virtual reality experience from the NYT app was specifically about bees and how important they are to our environment (The New York Times). Although the experience was interesting to observe, there were no choices being made by the user and no interactions were provided (The New York Times). For pure game play games, the user is constantly making choices and “playing the game” rather than taking away something from the experience. These types of education games focus solely on the enjoyment and entertainment the user experiences. An example of this would be the InMind VR app by Nival Inc (Luden.io). This virtual reality game requires the user to shoot neurons in order to cure depression (Luden.io). Even though the user is choosing whether or not to shoot the neurons, they are not learning anything about depression or what it is like to live with depression; they are doing a task to get a high score, thus there is no learning or educational value involved (Luden.io). Our virtual reality experience combines both game play and simulation in order to create a unique experience providing both educational value and entertainment from interaction. An example of a virtual reality experience that incorporates both entertainment and educational value is a depression virtual reality created by Penn State students Reika Yoshino and Jun Xia. According to Tiffany Yau’s article, Mental Health virtual reality gives students a glimpse of mental illness, the creators claimed that virtual reality can be very interactive and innovative in teaching complicated subjects such as depression; Yoshino and Xia ultimately hope to influence the Penn State community not only to raise awareness of mental health, but also think more about the roots of depression (Yau 1). In this example, a virtual reality simulator was both interactive and a simulation; users found the experience enjoyable while at the same time learning about a severe mental disorder. It is this experience that our virtual reality will emulate.
Since this experience relies on the basics of VR technology, such as audio and visual cues, this project will easily fit in with other VR experiences. This project will also include features such as gaze activation and choice implementation. Many VR experiences already use gaze activation technology such as the InMind app. Choice implementation is also a basic form of technology used in many experiences, VR or not. Although this is not a VR experience, the app Episode-Choose Your Story by Episode Interactive is a great example. Users can play in preloaded stories or create their own and create different branches to them in order for the reader to get the most out of their experience. The Playful Company also uses choice implementation in their VR experience for CPR certification courses (The Playful Company). The user can choose exactly what to do in an emergency situation and the ending changes based on the choices made (The Playful Company).
This application will be easily available to anyone. Although the focus will primarily be for educational purposes and in a classroom environment, this VR application will be beneficial for anyone to experience. Regarding the classroom environment, our experience will be given out to classrooms that focus on psychology, medicine, and education. This way, the students will get a unique experience that prepares them for their future careers. This experience will also be given to organizations that help the family and friends of someone suffering from mental illnesses and disabilities. This way, the people surrounding those suffering will be able to understand what they are going through. This experience will also be advertised on social media and gaming websites in order for everyone else to be able to experience mental illnesses and/or disabilities in VR. This way, the application will not only reach out to the people close to or in the community of mental illnesses and disabilities, but it will also to everyday people in order to reduce stigma.
This experience is not only an improvement upon the concept of VR technology, but it can also be improved upon as time goes on. This project combines technology from many different VR experiences while focusing on mental illnesses and disabilities. Although the prototype is centered around anxiety, more mental illnesses and disabilities can be added as needed. By the end of this project, the goal is to have almost every possible mental disability or illness as a possible experience for the user. Mental illnesses, again, are very stigmatized and the more that are added to the application, the more easily the experience can break down the walls of that stigma, not only from society but also within themselves. According to Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illnesses, people diagnosed with mental illnesses not only struggle with the symptoms and disabilities from that disease, they are also challenged from the stereotypes and misconceptions that are associated with their mental illnesses; research has suggested that instead of being diminished by the stigma, the person becomes angry of the prejudice they have experienced due to the stigma (Corrigan and Watson 1).
There is also an extended role to this project. If possible, a randomization feature would be very beneficial to this experience. The user can choose to have the whole experience be randomized or choose the mental illness/disability they want to experience. In the case that the user wants their experience to be randomized, their setting(s) and character will be randomized as well. It would be beneficial to be able to see what someone goes through will a mental illness such as anxiety and have that experience change. Instead of a student in school, they are a single father trying to make enough money for him and his kids. Or an elderly woman living in a nursing home. This project would not be finished if the prototype was used as its one and only adaption. For this project to reach its full potential, it would have to be improved upon through multiple versions involving different mental illnesses in different situations.
In terms of implementation strategy, potential barriers would be implementing different mental disorders in a virtual reality setting; the more mental disorders included would increase the costs of production and technical constraints in terms of how to include a multiple of mental disorders in one virtual reality simulation. A potential solution to these barriers to create different virtual reality simulators, each version having a different mental disorder for the user to experience. Another solution to these barriers to is to conduct more research on mental disorders to determine which disorders are the most stigmatized and misunderstood by the public. This solution could potentially limit the number and types of mental disorders that are marketed first, followed by least severe mental disorders being marketed later on in the future. Current technology such as 360-degree cameras will be integrated to catch panoramic images of the user’s experience along with choice mechanic technology in order to allow the user to choose their own adventure throughout the simulation, which in turn can lead to multiple endings of the simulation itself. These two current technologies will allow the user to have both an educational and entertaining experience.
As for long-term vision, a method for encouraging collaboration among the developers would be to encourage each developer to use his/her knowledge and strengths on the subjects of mental illnesses and virtual reality. In order to create this experience, each developer will have something to contribute in terms of research, technical development, script-writing, editing, etc. This virtual reality simulator will broaden the educational simulation market by implementing both educational and entertainment values; the simulation will be educational as it will teach the users about different mental illnesses, yet it will incorporate entertainment as it will allow the user to choose their own story throughout the experience. This allows the user to experience different scenarios and alternative endings within the simulator. Overall, these two aspects will create a first person experience that will teach valuable take-home lessons about mental disorders, which in turn help reduce stigma and encourage help for those who may be unable to help themselves.
Works Cited:
Corrigan, Patrick W, and Amy C Watson. “Understanding the Impact of Stigma on People with Mental Illness.” Understanding the Impact of Stigma on People with Mental Illness, pp. 16–20. www.waisman.wisc.edu/EVENTS/ethics/Corrigan_Stigma_WP_2002.pdf.
Luden.io. “InMind VR.” InMind VR, Luden.io, luden.io/inmind/.
The New York Times. “NYT VR.” The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/marketing/nytvr/.
The Playful Company. “Virtual Reality CPR Training.” The Playful Company, 26 July 2016, theplayful.company/work/virtual-reality-cpr-training/.
Yau, Tiffany. “‘Mental Health Virtual Reality’ Gives Students a Glimpse of Mental Illness.” The Daily Pennsylvanian, 3 Mar. 2016, www.thedp.com/article/2016/03/mental-health-virtual-reality.
Pictures:
https://kennethyoungcenter.wordpress.com/tag/stigma-against-mental-illness/
https://kennethyoungcenter.wordpress.com/tag/stigma-against-mental-illness/
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