Immersive picture book experience
for pediatrics patients

Escapade is a Project from Graduate school. The main objective of this project was to create a fun and relaxing virtual environment for children to help mitigate any kind of pain or anxiety during, pre or post-operative care.

About the Project

Escapade is a Studio Project from Graduate school. The main objective of this project is to create a fun and relaxing virtual environment for children to help mitigate any kind of pain, discomfort, stress or anxiety during, pre or post-operative care.

The project aims to create an immersive experience for pediatric patients through virtual reality using sound and visuals as distraction tools, in the context of medical care, to be useful in painful or difficult procedures.

Context

Medical procedures and hospital environments can be stressful for everyone. But for children, it’s unfamiliar and a completely new life experience. Patients are exposed to various objects, medications, and environments that can elicit negative emotions and symptoms, such as anxiety, nausea, vomiting, pain, and fatigue.

Having a negative experience could traumatise them and later in life, they may not be willing to undergo the procedures they need. But there are several ways that can help patients cope with these stressors and potentially improve their experience at the hospital.

The Research

Distraction-based Therapy

This is a type of therapy used to help children cope with painful or complicated procedures. Pediatric patients are often subjected to procedures that can cause pain and anxiety. Although pharmacologic interventions can be used, distraction is a simple and effective technique that directs children’s attention away from noxious stimuli.
‍

Virtual Reality (VR)

This as a distracting intervention to reduce symptomatic stress relate to the idea of distraction therapy through creating experiences for patients. Virtual environments are specifically designed to provide pleasant and engaging experiences, where patients navigate on their own through rich and varied simulated worlds. Studies support that the use of VR has far better outcomes than traditional evidence-based interventions due to the accessibility, control of content, customization options, and cost-effectiveness.
‍

Storytelling

This helps create a better experience, studies show that digital stories can be effective therapeutic tools to use with children and adolescents/young adults (AYA), thus helping mitigate suffering.Art has real therapeutic potential to ease the stress and worry of patients in hospitals. Even though the effect may be minimal, there are measurable beneficial physiological consequences of exposure to artwork.
‍

The process

User Research

Competitive Analysis Findings

Age Filters: None of the competitive products had age filters to help users navigate the product's content or features. This can be a missed opportunity to offer a more personalised user experience, especially for products that cater to specific age groups.
‍
Progress Bar: The presence of progress bar provides users with a sense of accomplishment and helped them track their progress through the product's content or features. This is an important feature that can enhance user engagement and motivation.
‍
‍Digital Animations: this provides users with visual feedback, enhancing the overall user experience. It can be a powerful tool to engage users, making them feel immersed and hence distracted from the medical tratements.I did some research on existing enterprises that pioneer in the market of platforms related to books, as their solutions to similar problems would help me gather insights about their strengths and weaknesses and help me identify different gaps in features that I should address.

User Personas

User persona helped me represent key motivation, pain points and needs of my targeted audience. Through this I was able to focus on tackling the most important problems and address the major needs of the most important user goals.

Major needs of the User
‍Distraction during injections, the user needs distraction or entertainment during medical procedures, specifically while getting injections.Soothing and calming support, requires support to calm down and soothe any anxiety or fear during medical procedures.Boredom, children get bored easily, which could lead to anxiety or restlessness, especially during prolonged medical procedures.Dislike for hospitals, young children do not enjoy the hospital environment, they indicate a need for a more comfortable and reassuring experience.

Major Findings & Decisions

- Telling stories through VR experience can help kids with curiosity, patience, and calm.

- Animations have to be calm and soothing.

- Simple and clean animations to avoid any dizziness due to procedures or first-time VR use.

- Age filters so children are not bored with the content.

- Selecting stories; inspirational, motivational, imaginative
(for the sake of this project I wanted to pick something meaningful to animate)

- Something that could work large scale and small scale
(eg: hospitals; chemo and diabetics regular injections at home)

- Usability in both VR and google cardboard.

Final Prototype

Escapade, an application that transforms picture books into immersive storytelling experiences that allow children to tag along with their favorite characters and unfold the journey together. Here you get a chance to choose your favorite book from a curated collection of popular picture books and purchase them to unlock New VR Content.

Immersive picture book experience
for pediatrics patients

Project:

Graduate Scool Thesis

Category:

Animation, Virtual Reality, User Research, User Interface, Testing

Tools:

Figma, Illustrator, After effects, Procreate, Oculus, and Google Cardboard

About the Project

Context