producing Immersive Experiences for Good
The Deep End:
a virtual reality (VR) restoration therapy simulation
Step into the shoes of a restaurant service worker in the Abyssal Zone and live through the Restorative Therapy cycles.
Team
Skills
Creative Director: Phoebe Lin
Developer: Kelly Zhang
Researcher: Madison Guida
Developer: George Chandler
Designer: Siena Theivagt
Meta Horizon Worlds, Meta Quest 2, Rapid Prototyping, Spatial Design, XR Development, Figma, Time Management, Leadership
[ACTIVE PROJECT]
Overview
For Texas Immersive Institute's annual 2-day Social Impact BuildFest 2024 event, I served as Creative Director for a virtual reality (VR) simulation experience to take audiences through the Restoration Therapy journey in a safe, interactive, and sensory world where one's deepest pains are brought to the surface by traversing challenging situations and experiencing a "belly of the beast" story moment.
To address the Mental Health social impact theme, we collaborated with Meta Horizon Worlds to experientially teach audiences a new tool to use the next time they find themselves in The Deep End of life...
In just a couple days of designing with Quest 2 headset, I spearheaded:
1) Integrating Restorative Therapy through deep sea worldbuilding and narrative design.
2) Rapid prototyping and blocking of physical environments within Meta Horizon Worlds.
3) Collaborated with tech mentors from Meta to scope and deliver a proof of concept pitch.
I learned:
1) Time management to prioritize effective front-end design workarounds to achieve story goals for a ONE DAY turn-around.
2) Building VR experiences using the Meta Horizon World creator tools for the FIRST TIME.
3) Future UX flow improvments from Meta's industry experts to emphasize the story progression between the pain and peace cycles of Restoration Therapy within our key "belly of the beast" scene...
...for future passes on this project. I'm absolutely thrilled with what we've achieved in a few days and I'm grateful my BuildFest team always heard me out when I pitched a crazy idea.
Through this project, I've crystalized my foundational passion for creating hyper-reality worlds, such as The Deep End, to drive societal change with storytelling. Therefore, I hope to continue the development of this project with our industry mentor feedback.
all in a day's work...
Day 0.5
Choose a Social Impact Theme
Concepting
Day 1
Learning Meta Horizons
Day 1.5
Build, Build, Build!
Pitch Proof of Concept
Industry Panel Feedback
And we stayed overnight to finish building up to the last minute! :D
We had so much fun brainstorming with mentor feedback to scope our world...
Proof of concept pitch
Future Development opportunities
I look forward to picking up this project again in collaboration with the amazing mentors I've met with from Meta to further polish the user experience of the pain and peace cycles. What an amazing hackathon BuildFest experience. Onwards!
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