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VR-EVA

Using VR to help friends and family support mothers with Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders
Project hero image

For

Qumulex full logo

Project Type & Deliverables

  • Product Design
  • Capstone Project
  • Proof of Concept

Project Details

Role

Product Designer

Team

4 UX Designers including me

Duration

8 months

Project Overview

VR-EVA is a Virtual Reality app that lets friends and family interact with a virtual mother experiencing Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs). Through these interactions, the app teaches them how to communicate and offer support to the mother if she develops a PMAD.

In this project, my team and I worked together through the entire design process. We conducted user research and translated the insights into a proof of concept that showcases how the app would function.

🏆🏆 The Wins

Along with the growth in our skills, we experienced some validation as well

A photograph of me with our capstone poster and the capstone award
Won the Best in VR award at our capstone showcase
A screenshot of the edge of our figjam board with a surprise emoji
Found the edge of the Figma board (not the biggest achievement but we impressed ourselves)

Division of Work & My Contributions

The entire team worked in tandem at every stage of the project.

My specific contributions were in
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Strategy
Proposed the Participatory Ideation and Affinity Mapping steps in the design process which proved crucial to the entire project
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Ideation
Kept a steady stream of ideas flowing in and came up with the idea that inspired the final solution

What do PMADs look like?

PMADs can take various forms such as anxiety, depression, OCD and PTSD, to name a few. In extreme cases, it can even lead to psychosis..
An illustration showing one woman highlighted from a group of 5, representing a 1 in 5 statistic.
An estimated 1 in 5 pregnant and postpartum women experience symptoms of PMADs.
Mountain Illustration

Our Challenge

How might we alleviate the challenges faced by women suffering from PMADs?
Jump to Solution

Design Process Outline

VR-EVA Design Process. Starts with Research followed by Analysis, Ideation and then takes a detour to Participatory design and then finishes with Prototyping

Design Process

ResearchAnalyzeIdeateParticipatory DesignPrototype
Jump to Final Designs

Research Questions

  1. What does one’s PMAD experience look like?
  2. How does diagnosis and treatment work?
  3. What are the current coping methods?

Research Methods

An Illustration of the research methods used. Starts with Desk Research, which informed the construction of the interview protocol, which was then used to conduct interviews with 2 mothers who had experience dealing with Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders

Thematic Analysis

Next, we conducted a detailed analysis of findings from the desk research and interviews using the Affinity mapping technique
Affinity Map for VR-Eva
This was one of the most meticulous and insightful steps in our entire process

Key Insights

Insight #1
Lack of visibility and understanding
People are not aware of PMADs for the most part and do not know how common they are. This lack of knowledge can lead to stigma, especially after hearing about the severe cases.
Insight #2
PMAD experiences are unique
Each patient's PMAD experience is distinct due to the various forms it can take.
Insight #3
Education is necessary for everyone around the mother
With the mother already going through hormonal and physiological changes, the responsibility of accommodation and education primarily falls on those surrounding the patient.

The People Involved

The bigger picture surrounding a PMAD patient’s journey typically includes
An Illustration of the people involved in the whole PMAD Scenario. The people involved include - The mother who is the PMAD patient, The spouse and the friend/family member.
We found that the friends and family had the potential to be the most helpful due to their:
  • Zoomed-out perspective
  • Closeness to the patient
However, this perspective was missing from our research...
Nonetheless, we moved to ideation using our insights so far...

Ideation

We conducted:
1 round of individual ideation + 1 round of group ideation

Resulting in a pool of 31 ideas

Curly Brace Initial Pool of Ideas

Participatory Design (Ideation + Research)

In order to:

  • To gain the missing perspective of the friend or family member
  • Validate our ideas
  • Generate even more ideas

We conducted 3 face to face sessions with candidates who were friends with or the family of a PMAD patient.

PD session structure

Participatory Design Session

As a result, we ended up with...

An Illustration of a collection of light bulbs signifying the generation of multiple ideas
A total of 35 Ideas
An illustration of several light bulbs, with some bulbs faded. Signifies the filtering of ideas
Which we filtered using internal voting and external feedback (Mentor, and PD session participants)
  • Internal Voting and
  • External feedback from our Mentor and PD session participants
An illustration of several light bulbs. However only one of them is lit and the others are faded. Signifies that one idea has been finalised
To finalize one idea
Single Large Light Bulb

The Final Idea

A decision-based VR Experience where the user would play the role of a PMAD patient’s friend and learn to interact with them.

The Components of the application

Line drawing of a person wearing a VR headset signifying the player who would be using the application
A Player, seeing the world through the eyes of a friend learning to interact with the PMAD patient
Line drawing of the view from a VR headset with multiple squares representing levels in the game
Multiple levels/scenarios - Each level will have a storyline pertaining to a different kind of PMAD
Line drawing of the view from a VR Headset with a totem, virtual mother and the helpfulness meter in view
  • Totems - Objects that teach how to interact with a PMAD patient.
  • A virtual mother - simulating the PMAD patient
  • A helpfulness meter - signifying how helpful you are being as a friend

How will it work?

Arrow Right Icon
The player collects totems in the world and learns how to interact with the mother from them
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The player then applies the learnings from each totem, while interacting with the mother
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Each correct interaction increases the helpfulness meter, while incorrect interactions incur a penalty

Prototyping

We started the Proof of concept(POC) prototyping process by:

Identifying the POC components

We identified the following components
  • A story for one level
  • A design for the totems
  • A design for the interactions with the mother
  • A way to illustrate the helpfulness meter

Building the flow for one level

We used a technique called collaborative storytelling to build out the flow for one level
Flow chart of one level

Sketching the UI Elements

Sketch of the totem library
Library of Totems
dialog box sketch
Dialog boxes for interactions with the mother
totem card sketch
Totem Cards and Reveal
sketch of the world map for one level
Map of the world for one level

Followed by the High Fidelity Designs

To illustrate how this application would work, we created a video demonstration of the POC.

We made this using Figma, Canva and Rec Room which is a social VR application that allows you to build a VR world and interact with other players.

Design Process

Hi-Fi screen with the world and the virtual mother
Explore a world with a virtual PMAD patient to learn how to interact with someone going through a PMAD
Hi-Fi screen of the totem reveal
Uncover hidden learnings on totems to learn how to interact/communicate with a PMAD patient
Hi-Fi screen of the totem library
Reference past totems and learning through your totem library
Hi-Fi screen with a dialog for the interactions with the mother
Point 1
Use your learnings from the totems to interact correctly with the mother
Point 2
Identify right and wrong interactions with the helpfulness meter

Proof-of-Concept Video

The video of the entire demonstration can be found on this link

Next Steps

Prototype Construction

Due to time and expertise constraints, we could not build a functioning VR application with the features mentioned above. Given time we would explore development with Unity to construct a VR application.

Evaluation

Using the constructed VR application, we would test our product with pregnant women and their families to check the efficacy of our concept.

Learnings

Questioning everything
Questioning all decisions allowed us to delve deep into our research and uncover the most insights.
The nuances of designing for VR
This being my first VR project, I gained exposure to the intricacies of designing for VR, such as translucent menus and positioning of UI elements.

A Big Shoutout to the support system!

A picture of the team and the mentors with the project showcase poster and assets
A big, heartfelt shoutout to our exceptional mentors, Elizabeth Wertz, Mallika Mahoui, and Danielle Behrens. Their unwavering support and expert guidance is what made this project possible.

Next project - Netilion Conserve 

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