DESIGN CHALLENGE
Recreating a mindful virtual environment in the comfort of your own home to help reduce stress and cope with anxiety.
Mindfulness and meditation have been studied extensively in the past where they review the effectiveness of meditation, alongside the benefits associated with it. A study has conducted surrounding mindfulness showed that there were significant improvements in depression when participants practiced mindfulness (Lee, Insook et al, “Effects of ForestTherapy on Depressive Symptoms among Adults: A Systematic Review”).
Format
This product would ideally exist in a game engine such as Unity or Unreal engine because most Virtual Reality games are created in Unity since its currently being advertised as a game console. This should be advertised on Steam so the product could take advantage of the Steam workshop, where users could create their own meditation scenes and share them with the community. This way it helps create a space where users feel comfortable with communicating their experiences and share tips on how to improve upon their own mistakes
Users
The target demographic for this project are Gen Z’s and Millennials since this audience is considered more “tech-savvy”.
This demographic is also more likely to be depressed and have several other mental health issues compared to the previous generations(Akers, “Is Gen Z more depressed?”).
Users would also most likely be gamers because of its availability on Steam.
Viability
Users would need to be able to spend $400 CAD to purchase a virtual reality headset.
This product would use C# coding because it's being made in Unity’s engine.
There are existing VR meditation applications available, but none address community.
The scenes must look realistic to help facilitate the immersion
Olivia was created to gain an understanding the type of user I should be mindful of. I focused primarily on people who feel overwhelmed due to working remotely, as moving to this new medium has been stressful for many people specifically with those who work office jobs.
Benefits of Meditation
There is a direct correlation between meditation and the benefits of nature exposure. Nature exposure alongside mindfulness and meditation could help de-stress and cultivate a healthy relationship between humans and nature.
VR Therapy
There have been many instances where VR has been used to help treat mental health illnesses, VR provides a safe environment where patients could confront their fears and learn coping mechanisms.
Barriers to Meditation
The main barriers surrounding meditation are restlessness and irritation. It takes time to develop the skills to meditate and focus on one central activity. In addition, the idea is that any sound can pull you away from the meditation.
The wireframes were based on the game Escape Room Simulator and based my idea around it as well, I took inspiration from this game because of the simplicity of the design. I really liked how the game framed its maps due to its intuitive design, in addition, I just really liked the game's UI overall and thought it would be a great way to lay out my design.
This is where I really struggled with the design, on top of this I was experiencing severe burnout from the semester which was causing a designer block. I asked some friends for some feedback, and one suggested I use a tabs menu instead of a left menu. This is what got me out of my slump because the tabs menu ended up framing the design so much better, I also settled on this dark blue colour palette because I felt like it was dark enough that it wouldn’t take away from the main focus which was the scenery.
Here was where the design really took off, I finally felt I got out of my designer block and was starting to move towards creating something that was truly mine. I originally had the titles of the environment stationary, but I felt that it was in the way of the image for the environment, so I switched it to an on-hover. I also change the custom menu to the left side so it could serve as more of an enhancement.
I went with a dark blue colour scheme because the colour blue represents relaxation and serenity, I used a lighter blue as the accent colour for the buttons. I used dark blue as the background since it contrasted enough without taking away from the main focus, which is the scenery.
User Test 1
During my first user test, there were comments about the colour choice for the side menu and for the custom menu. The tester said that the side menu colour felt dull and suggested on using a darker blue instead of a grey blue. Another suggestion that the user tester said was to add Spotify to the custom menu. I ended up adding this in because I neglected to consider how music could help facilitate meditation and thought it was a good idea to add.
User Test 2 & 3
User testing 2 and 3 happened at the same time because I was working with friends and they both wanted to try out the prototype. They suggested on making the volume sliders bigger because it would be harder to press the slider and move it in a VR environment. Another suggestion was to center the settings menu because it was right aligned compared to the main menu, which looked centered but was actually right-aligned as well. Regarding the custom menu I asked their thought on adding a Spotify button and if they had any other ideas of what to add to the custom menu. They were both in support of the Spotify button. They noted that the type wasn’t consistent because everything is supposed to be lowercase and some of the text I accidentally capitalized in the beginning.
I added all these adjustments because they were an interesting way to make the overall experience better and add more functionality to the app
I added more functionality to the prototype and changed the colour palette of the design. I made the Steam workshop pages and filled in all of the labels. I overall finalized the prototype and the design so that I could start stylizing the Unity prototype.
Changed over to this dark green palette so that it would blend better with the background environments, still keeping it dark enough so that it contrasts better with the environment. I decided to change it because I felt like the blue made the application look more like a travel app compared to a meditation app, whereas the green is more representative of balance and harmony which the prototype was trying to achieve.
These are the top 3 meditation environments that will change bi-weekly, these can be taken from the Steam Community library or from the general meditations from the in-game library
These are a list of in-game guided meditations, environments, and community meditations to choose from. Here the user has a wide selection of various types of meditations to choose from.
Here the user will have access to a wide variety of tools that will help facilitate meditation. The user can choose from a wide variety of guided meditations, ambiance sounds, and environments, and could even connect their own Spotify account.
Here the user can access a series of education that will help them understand the benefits and types of meditation. They can also learn about what is meditation and mindfulness.
This whole process was a huge journey for me as I never used unity before I never worked in a 3d/360 environment and I was expecting a lot of failure, but I also hoped for great success in this project. I used to practice mindfulness and meditation everyday, this was usually done during my walk to school or when transitioning between classes. Since transition to remote learning, I found myself being more restless and irritated, essentially my entire routine during school has been removed and I was stuck staying at home 24/7. I’ve realized that I stopped meditating which had led me to become less relaxed and caused a lot of stress in my life, whenever I tried meditating at home I would get distracted by the little things and wouldn’t be able to focus. That is when I started planning out my thesis project and wanted to discover a way to meditate in peace, VR has been one of my new ventures since the technology for it has been become more accessible and easier to learn.
