Posted: July 1, 2017, 7:31pm
Often, some of the best journeys are the detours one did not mean to take. Something similar is happening in my current phase of Grad School.
In my previous article on how I got my feet inside, I mentioned how I got MxR studio at ICT to support me in my project proposal. It was fascinating that people around me understood what I was trying to explain. One of the issues that I deeply care about is the mental health illnesses: be it the agonizing treatment that people go through, the ailments themselves or the social stigma attached, all bunching together to exacerbate the relationship between what the patients should be thinking versus what their thoughts end up being. As much as it bothered me, I realized, not doing anything about it is making me an active participant in propelling a generation of stymied potential. So many creative, hardworking and visionary individuals suffer from different anxiety disorders and perform so below their potentials because often, their ‘anxiety’ is ignored with a cavalier disregard: both by themselves and by others. I coveted action with respect to this.
Deeply affected by these thoughts, I came up with a framework that integrates storytelling, virtual reality, and behavioral interventions and pitched it to MxR. I got funded to develop a design document to give a more concrete shape to the idea.
And that’s how I spent my June 2017. I worked with Robert Karimi, (MFA, Roski School of Art) and Valerie Lin (Junior, IMGD) to create the design doc. Working with people of such diverse backgrounds was extremely refreshing and a great learning experience. I’ll explain the design process in more detail in my future blog posts.
Immersion in a virtual world often has a visceral and poignant impact on an individual. To be able to create a salutary experience for patients who need different behavioral interventions but for different reasons do not avail it, can have rather interesting ramifications. With this mindset, I took a leap and focussed all my efforts in building this project. Stay tuned for the progress on this!
Published on July 25th, 2017
Last updated on August 10th, 2017