WEEK 3

Progress

This week, we spent some time preparing for our quarters walkarounds–assessing our current place in the project development and what sort of help we need.

Having to respond to questions and feedback about our decisions helped us solidify some decisions. This included focusing on practicality–making something that is at least as good as in-person art therapy, over exploring more experimental possibilities. Thus, a major focus will remain on documenting how playtesters react to the spaces and interfaces we develop.

We also received suggestions to take advantage of the freedom of 3D bodily movement in VR and to playtest some existing VR spaces and VR art tools to get some real user feedback before finishing and playtesting our first prototype. 

We also scheduled a meeting with Tom a second time and his advisor, Ikuko Acosta, so in preparation for that, our artist prepared some concept art of the space to make sure we were aligned.

To wrap up the week, we finished the first draft of our branding materials and website, and set up Multi-Brush on the Oculus headsets (the hurdles we had to jump through for this supposedly simple task suggest that networked VR may be troublesome).

End User Communication

We met with Tom and Ikuko to gather some more information and clarify and solidify the project goals more. A major point of discussion was the absence of video, for conveying facial expressions while in VR with the headsets on. We considered simply focusing on a browser based experience that would keep this very important component intact, but ultimately decided to focus on exploring art therapy in that medium only. This was partially a personal preference for our team members, but it also takes more advantage of the skills that the ETC fosters.

Some things we need to consider going forward are: the implications of one-on-one instead of group art therapy, which seems to be the norm, and different ways for the therapist to observe the patient’s process, potentially outside of the VR headset. 

Next Steps

Next week, we will conduct playtests in Multi-Brush, continue development on networking in our current prototype, and develop some environment and interface concepts to present to our expert end-users.