Project Summary - Letting Go

Premise

I worked in a team of 3 people to conceptualize, design, and develop a VR experience that explored themes of therapeutic thought disposal, which is when you accept that you have stressors in your life and make the conscious decision to let them go. This VR experience, titled “Letting Go,” is aimed towards teenagers who may be struggling with stress in their lives.

Process

While we knew that we wanted to go with this idea of thought disposal, we weren’t sure how exactly we wanted to go about it. I ultimately came up with the concept we ran with.

We developed a VR experience that put the users in a “prescribed burning” situation where they were the ones responsible for putting out the fires to encourage the mindset of actively quelling stressful thoughts in their lives.

Result

Our near-final result was received very well when we were doing user testing. Users overwhelmingly reported that they felt at ease and thought that the act of putting out the fires was relaxing and intuitive to do. We think that this project was a resounding success as our pilot project for the Seattle Public Library. 

Takeaways

• The best stories for the user are the ones they get to make themselves. Don't rely too much on narration to deliver a story.
• VR is a novel experience that elicits visceral reactions from users. People tend to do what they would do in real life when in a VR environment.

Letting Go in Detail

Exploring therapeutic concepts in VR.

For my first job with the Seattle Public Library (SPL), my team was tasked with creating a teen-oriented Virtual Reality experience that explored themes surrounding Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). One of these themes is the concept of thought disposal.

Thought Disposal, sometimes less is more.

Thought disposal, in the therapeutic sense, is when you think intentionally about things that are bothering you and almost make “physical” room for it within your own psyche. Then, you make the active choice to not worry about it, hence “disposing” it.

Prescribed Burning: From stress management to stress disposal.

We didn’t actually start this project specifically focusing on thought disposal from the start. We originally focused on the broader concepts relating to stress management. My first idea surrounding this put the user in an overwhelming environment where they would be surrounded by many papers that they would have to grab. However, the more the user tried to grab them, the more would spawn, and eventually, the user would become overwhelmed. After the user stops trying to control their surroundings, things would clear up, and the user will be introduced to a beautiful, peaceful environment. Below is a storyboard that illustrates this process

This idea was far too convoluted to be viable, so I went back to the drawing board. I eventually came up with the idea of going with a “prescribed burning” approach. Explicitly, the user would spawn in a forest fire situation where they would be tasked with putting out small fires to calm the environment. Below is a storyboard I made that illustrates this concept.

Why this approach was effective from a narrative & game perspective… taking advantage of visceral reactions within users.

I thought that this idea was effective because the concept of a prescribed burning in a forest context was an effective allegory to cleaning one’s psyche. If the concept of prescribed burning is new, it’s when certain sections of forests are burned intentionally since it helps protect the forest long term from uncontrollable fires as well as making it easier for new life to grow. Furthermore, the objective for the player would be obvious from the start. With the paper idea, it would be too unclear what the player is supposed to do. However, when the user is placed in a high stress environment, such as a forest fire, if you give them some way to fix the situation, like a water bucket in this case, the user is intuitively going to try to put out the fires. This approach made significantly more sense from both a narrative and gameplay perspective. The less spoonfed exposition for the user, the better.

Development Process

Development is where we spent the bulk of our time, especially because this was my first big unity project. Because we had a strong direction initially, we didn’t significantly change course throughout the project. This streamlined development, and below shows a small snippet of what that process looked like in the engine.

How I built an immersive environment.

For development, I was responsible for creating the logic behind the bushes being set on fire semi-randomly. I wanted to make the forest being set on fire seem as natural as possible.

Having all of the brush be actively burning as the user would have been too jarring of an environment to put the user in, so I wanted to make more small fires start as time went on. However, I wanted the story to be more interactive based on the user's actions. 

I accomplished this by having the combustion chance for each small bush increase with each fire the user put out in addition to spreading over time. I made it this way because I didn’t want the user to be able to put out all the fires too fast and then randomly see more small fires start out of nowhere. That would break immersion.

Simple can be fun, too!

For development, I was responsible for creating the logic behind the bushes being set on fire semi-randomly. I wanted to make the forest being set on fire seem as natural as possible.

Having all of the brush be actively burning as the user would have been too jarring of an environment to put the user in, so I wanted to make more small fires start as time went on. However, I wanted the story to be more interactive based on the user's actions. 

I accomplished this by having the combustion chance for each small bush increase with each fire the user put out in addition to spreading over time. I made it this way because I didn’t want the user to be able to put out all the fires too fast and then randomly see more small fires start out of nowhere. That would break immersion.

Testers loved it! & Final Touches

Towards the end of development, we were able to get some local teenagers to test our experience. Its reception was overwhelmingly positive. The teens we interviewed particularly enjoyed the experience of putting out the fires. They also enjoyed the narration we provided. Most importantly, they did relate more to the message we were trying to convey through this experience. 

Moving forward with the project from this point on, all we had left to take care of was to put some finishing touches on the project regarding sound design and fog effects.

Personal Takeaways & Reflection

While I learned a lot from this first work assignment from the Seattle Public Library, especially storytelling, developing virtual environments, and virtual teamwork, these two takeaways were by far the most impactful.

The best stories for the user are the ones they get to make themselves.

While I think the actual gameplay itself is smooth and player-driven, i.e. there’s not too much scripting within the world, I still think we relied on spoken narration to deliver story points. 

A little late in the process, we realized that we needed to connect the prescribed burning concept to the player, otherwise, they probably won’t make that connection as they’re playing. This caused us to write a little more narration than we would have liked for this.

VR is a novel experience that elicits visceral reactions from users.

The coolest thing about VR isn't necessarily how the environment looks. Rather, it's how it makes users feel when they are immersed in their environment. Our testers reported that they actually felt like they were putting out fires. Further, they didn't need any prompting to do it.

When you put someone in a situation where there are fires around them, if you give them a bucket full of water, they're intuitively going to put out the fires.