A hands-free VR experience for pediatric healthcare designed to prepare children for medical procedures through immersive and courageous storytelling.
Introduction
Developed in collaboration with the Centre for Digital Media and Tandem Impact Collective, BraveVR is a narrative-driven experience designed to reduce medical anxiety for pediatric patients. It transforms high-stress clinical procedures into a calming "brave space" through interactive storytelling.
The Challenge
Designing for clinical settings requires solving for restricted mobility(due to medical equipment) and high cognitive load. The interface needed to be friction-less and accessible to children in physically constrained or stressful environments.
Technical Approach
I built a hands-free interaction framework in Unity to bypass physical limitations:
- Multimodal Input — Utilized head-gaze tracking, IMU-based gesturesand breath-based inputs for navigation without hand controllers.
- Interactive Environment — Integrated head-gaze and breath-based inputs to power environmental effects, subtly guiding patients toward calming breathing exercises.
- Optimization — Prioritized high-performance rendering to ensure a stable, nausea-free experience for vulnerable users.
Design Decisions
To facilitate a seamless experience in clinical settings, the design leverages cognitive behavior therapy through low-stress environmental puzzles that are strategically timed to coincide with procedural milestones, effectively shifting the child’s focus from the medical task to the narrative. This is complemented by modular pacing, featuring an adaptive story flow that allows healthcare providers to easily synchronize the VR experience with the specific duration of each procedure.