Neural Shine
Activity-Based Meditation (Virtual and Mixed Reality)
VR meditation application. Team: 4 Product Designers. Game Engine: Unity Project. Time: 3 Weeks
OVERVIEW:
THE CHALLENGE
Design and develop a mobile Virtual Reality meditation application that is aesthetically pleasing, calming, and preoccupying for Samsung Gear VR.
PRODUCT OVERVIEW
Project Name: Neural Shine
Team: Tim Kanellitsas, Rhea Jayachandran, Bryn Christenson
Project Duration: 3 weeks
Deployment Platform: Oculus Rift
Reality: Virtual & Mixed Reality
Summary: Neural Shine is a meditation application, focussing on action-oriented practices to induce flow and calmness. The first-person experience was designed for Virtual Reality, but we also designed the application with Mixed Reality in mind, and took the third-person viewing perspective into account. The floating and circling balls contribute both to the first-person's activity and act as an indicator of progress (for the third-person) when the application connects to an EEG.
MY ROLE
I drove both the Audio, Game Mechanic Design, and Interaction Design, while my two teammates focussed on the Polish and environment.
Why Virtual Reality?
Virtual Reality is an amazing focussing tool. With the solitude that comes with a single-player VR application comes the opportunity to remove oneself from the drudgeries and stresses of everyday. There are many genres in VR that contribute to mental health. Some revolve around pain management and Physical Therapy, while others orbit meditation practices and other areas in consciousness hacking.
Virtual Reality also offers flexibility in shaping the environment, tools, and activities. Since we are the architects of that reality, we can create new forms and practices by focussing on abstractions of established techniques (such as Focused meditation, Mindfulness Meditation, and Action-Oriented Meditation).
METHODS
Problem definition, competitive analysis, user flow & storyboard, feature prioritization, wireframes, spatial mapping, in-VR prototyping (Google Blocks), VR prototyping (Unity), and usability testing.
KPIS
Anecdotal increase in calmness
Time in experience
Interest in continuing the experience (1-10)
PRIMARY TOOLS
Unity game engine, Google Blocks, Unity Editor VR (beta), Paper & Sharpies
Ideation: A Meditation Application
Step 1 of Ideation: Research
Activity-Oriented Meditation Techniques: With this type of meditation, you engage in a repetitive activity, or one where you can get ‘in the zone’ and experience ‘flow.’ Again, this quiets the mind, and allows your brain to shift. Activities like gardening, creating artwork, or practicing yoga can all be effective forms of meditation.
Step 2 of ideation: brain dump
Focussing first on the story/ process the first-person user would experience, we wrote down multiple options, including different characters and objects that would "pull" the user through the experience.
Step 3: Design Clause
For people who are interested in or study the correlation of different stimuli and brain waves. Neural Shine is a serene environment that places users in one of two places; (1) in a world with intractable objects that give off beautiful audible and visual notions with every touch, enabling different states of mind, such as concentration and relaxation and (2) an out of body view of this situation. Unlike current neural networking tools, our experience creates two viewpoints that completely immerses the user in the environment to measure brain waves produced when neurons communicate with each other.
Concept Design and Theme
“Meditation is more than a serene environment and calming music; it’s a process.”
concept 1: Yayoi Kusama-inspired infinity room
Mirrors and lights are very computationally expensive! We had to switch ideas to save the performance.
Snowing Hot Springs Theme
The environment should be calming, but not distracting. User feedback revealed that the original environment, though mystic, had distracting, almost stressful, features.
Wireframes & In-VR Spatial Design
Key Elements of Game Design
Core activity. The activity preoccupies the user, keeping them focussed enough to induce flow, but simple enough for relaxation.
Progress indicator. The balls levitating and spinning are positive feedback indicating progress in the application.
Aesthetic environment. The environment must be relaxing and not distracting.
Music. Same principle as the environment: relaxing, soothing, not distracting.
Designing the Activity with google Blocks
Google Blocks is an amazing tool to "grey box" an experience. Tilt Brush (VR painting) is a great tool for concept design.
Outlining Game Mechanics, Delegating Jobs To Be Done
We distilled the “jobs to be done” list down to 4 core areas:
Interaction: Gaze-based (essential for mobile deployment)
State Machine. Balls light up, hover, and then orbit around the user.
Game Manager. Game Manager keeps track of the states as the user progresses through the application.
Particle System. Light grows from within the glass balls, snow falls from the sky, steam rises from the water.
Final concept: Reticle-Based Interaction, Button Input
KPIS:
KPIs noticeable calmness when playing from subjects.
Subjects eager to keep using the application, either to continue exploring or enhance the meditative state.
User’s steps:
1. Our user will be taken to an environment surrounded by objects that catch light. They will sit in the middle of a circle, surrounded by glass balls. They look to the right and left and see a beautiful outside environment (tbd). They look up and see the sky. They look down and see their reflection in a body of water.
2. Our user will interact with the glass balls.
3. Our users will receive light and sounds shooting off from the glass balls upon their touch.
4. Our users will continue interacting with these glass balls, eventually going into meditative flow, reducing their stress levels and feeling a sense of zen.
5. Our users will feel an overwhelming amount of happiness and mindfulness due to visually appealing objects and magical sounds.
Next steps
Using an EEG.Connect an EEG headset to the experience to make ball activity reactive to brain state (calm vs tense).
New environments. Providing the user with more environmental options will likely increase user retention and engagement.
New activities. For the same reason new environments, in addition to more activities providing more data on the users.