VR Therapy: Multisensory Experience
Summary of First Client Meeting
We worked with Ashley Carrick, the founder and Chief Excecutive Officer of TherapyOS, in our project to implement virtual reality (VR) technology in autism therapy. In order to learn more about the problem we needed to solve, we conducted our first client meeting with Ashley on March 9th, from 3:30 p.m. to 4:50 p.m. via Google Hangout. All members were present at the meeting. We hoped to learn more about Ashley's company, TherapyOS, the problem she intended to solve and her expectations for us in this project. Below is a summary of the information about our user group, the design problem and the client's requirements we learned in this meeting. Please note that the problem, user and requirements stated here only reflect the client's initial plan. Refer to the section Design Review for our project's final problem, user and requirements.
Problem
User
From her interactions with therapists, Ashley found that the current methods used in autism therapies are staff intensive. She hoped to use virtual reality (VR) technology to create an immersive and safe environment for these individuals to improve their social skills.
In this project, we will be working with children with autism. During the meeting, Ashley pointed out some important facts about autism that caused the problem described above.
-
First of all, autism is a spectrum, meaning that each individual on the spectrum is different. Therefore, the types of treatments need to be carefully selected and personalized after the initial assessment.
-
Many individuals with autism have problems communicating, so it might be difficult for us to get their feedback.
-
Their reactions to stimuli may be different from a neurotypical person. Additionally, they may not be able to pick up and respond to social cues.
-
Most individuals on the spectrum need to follow a set schedule, because of which they can be overwhelmed by novel environments and experiences. A good way to prepare them for these situations is through social stories. However, social stories take a long time to create, and need to be repeated multiple times to help the individual build a routine. Many parents do not to use social stories because they are very time consuming to be practiced at home.
Client's expectations
-
The app should be build with low cost
-
The plan should be crafted in a way that makes the app marketable.
-
Gather consumer insights from observations and interviews with individuals with autism, their parents and therapists.
-
Identify the specific user group we can work with, along with our target markets.
-
Identify the features of the final application that will need to be customizable. Additionally, identify the level of abstraction to use in the VR social stories.
-
Write five social stories and plans for how to integrate them in VR, which the developers at TherapyOS will use to create the VR app.
Client's requirements
