Theme
My thesis aims to act as a resource for current 3rd year medical students who are in their psych rotation learning about behavioral manifestations of defense mechanisms formed during a period of toxic stress in childhood. The theme of the experience is about reading contextual and behavioral cues in order to more effectively diagnose or treat a patient.
The current piece is a VR narrative experience which is driven by the questions that the user asks the patient. The patient will answer differently depending on the questions asked and reveal more or less information. The goal of the experience is to get the medical student to understand contextual clues and to read behavioral signs, so they will have to diagnose their patient at some point during the game.
Reflection
The user will experience the perspective of what it may be like to interact as a medical professional with a child who is suffering from toxic stress through their interaction with the child character. The user will also experience what it’s like to interact with a patient in a longer-term setting so they can really spend time learning about the person they are dealing with. From this, they will be exposed to the concept of diagnosis as well as information gathering as a professional, based on the questions they ask the patient. The user will also encounter the concept of understanding what they don’t know about their patient through the aesthetic of a child sitting in a blank world. As the user learns more, the world will fill up with different clues about the patient’s life. Lastly, the user will see the long term outcome of a patient that they diagnosed in order to better understand the impact that their decisions as a medical professional might have on a young person’s life.
Point of view
The user’s perspective will be that of a medical professional- most likely a therapist or psychiatrist working in the US.
Challenge
The challenge of my thesis is to communicate the difficulties of diagnosis and emphasize the importance of reading into contextual clues and understanding behavioral signs, as much as possible.
Perception
The narrative is represented through a VR experience. The user will see a child sitting in a chair in a room. The room’s walls will slowly fill with more information as the user finds out more about the child. The visual style will be fairly minimal with the focus on the character. The character will be a little cartoony and will be designed so that physical signs of trauma will be fairly easy to detect. This aesthetic was chosen because lifelike VR isn’t developed enough yet- so, the focus will be on creating an aesthetic that helps students see visual signs without necessarily looking 100% lifelike.
Decision-making
Users make decisions throughout the experience by choosing the questions to ask the patient. These decisions will come via prompt. The information space is not perfect as there are many possibilities of behavioral outcomes that can happen which cannot all be represented.
Context
The audience is specifically 3rd year medical students in their psych rotation. They will find out about it through a professor and they will interact with it because it will be an additional resource for them to learn from.
Emotions
While the intent of this experience is to educate, the hope is that the user will feel confused and uncertain about their decisions in the game. They may also feel sad or upset based on the narrative.
Cat Schmitz 