SayIt
Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is currently common among youngsters all over the globe. The technological development that creates a virtual environment and regional factors like China’s one-child policy that has just been abolished several years ago are possible causes besides the traditional cognition of SAD. Different types of therapy have been applied to mitigating or even curing SAD, some use advanced technologies like virtual reality, while others are quite conventional, such as music therapy that has been applied decades ago. This project aims to find potential integration of music therapy and VR for a playful solution to SAD.
Type
Graduation Project
Year
2020-21
Category
Virtual Reality
Expertise Areas
T&R, U&S
Dialogue with music
The dialogue includes the actual sentences and the incorrect interpretation of people with SAD, and by combining the incorrect interpretations with music of negative emotions and the correct interpretation with positive emotions, the patients are guided to shift their cognition of conversational emotions.
Multiple social scenarios
Totally four scenarios comprised the entire program. The scenarios included different types of contents of social interaction, from oral to body language, and from self-introduction to commenting on certain things. The intensity of social interaction increases with a sequence of scenarios.
Virtual Reality Implementation
The program was developed with Unity 3D and the running structure was supported by corresponding C# scripts. Various technological parts were involved, such as 3D animation triggering, sound control logic, moving inside the virtual environment with VR input modules, and user interfaces interaction in a 3D environment, etc.
Reflection
This is my bachelor's final project. Thanks to my mentor's help, I published a paper at an internationally renowned conference, which is a good start to my study in research through design instead of merely design research.
There are still some limitations: for example, the number of the interviewees was not sufficient, the environment and visual interaction need to be embellished, and due to the characteristics of the therapy of such mental issues like the long clinical period, the test was still about usability instead of its actual clinic efficacy.
This project basically concluded my competence in Technology & Realization, particularly in XR development. The research part had a lot to do with User & Society, and compared to the previous NODV project, this part of the research may not be that complete, but included more academic reviews for theoretical support. Like most of my previous projects, some parts of the project need to be improved in terms of Aesthetics. For further development of this project, Math, Data & Computing can be involved to supervise the patients' behavior in clinical therapy sessions.