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Hardware&Software Lab · University of Washington
Lullaland: a multi-sensory VR journey with scents feedback
Duration
March 2022 to Jun 2022
My work
Prototyper - Enclosure design, Physical computing
Designer - Figma, Unity
Work with
Bo Liu
Steve Wang
Rui Huang
What is Lullaland?
People associate the hospital with things they deem stressful and scary. When they are in healthcare settings, patients have emotional reactions like anxiety, aggression, and anger mainly because they lack control of their environment. These emotional responses can increase not only pain sensitivity but also delay important medical treatment, lower efficiency, and also undermine patients’ willingness to continue their healthcare treatment.
People associate the hospital with things they deem stressful and scary. When they are in healthcare settings, patients have emotional reactions like anxiety, aggression, and anger mainly because they lack control of their environment. These emotional responses can increase not only pain sensitivity but also delay important medical treatment, lower efficiency, and also undermine patients’ willingness to continue their healthcare treatment.
How might we help patients in hospitals reduce panic and anxiety, which lead to a more pleasant experience ?
What's the problem?
People associate the hospital with things they deem stressful and scary, and a negative or traumatic experience can result in additional issues such as needle phobia. Patients have emotional reactions like anxiety, aggression, anger, and other similar expressions of emotion when they are in healthcare settings, mainly because they lack control of their environment.These emotional responses can increase not only pain sensitivity but also delay important medical treatment, lower efficiency, and also undermine patients’ willingness to continue their healthcare treatment.
Timeline
Interview
Interview
We interviewed 12 participants, including 6 adults and 6 parents, each for 30 minutes.
We asked them to walk us through the whole experience they had at clinic, and asked their mood changes.
"I have no idea how much longer do I need to wait. Just endless waiting."
Insight1
Most of users felt anxious in the waiting room. Some of them had experiences of more than 2 hours waiting
"I just read news or play games on my phone to kill time."
Insight2
Many people will focus on their phone or chat with friends to try to get distracted from the anxiety.
"I hate the smell of alcohol in hospitals. It brings bad memory"
Insight3
Hospital environment, sanitizer smell and the fear of unknown diagnosis results are the main causes of anxiety.
Survey
We also conducted a survey to further prove our insights. We sent out questionnaires online and got 40 results.
Q: Feelings about Hospital
90% of participants would feel nervous when they go to hospitals.
The hospital environment, unknown therapies and the smell of the hospital are the top three factors that cause anxiety.
Q: How to get relaxed
70% of participants reported that they have tried meditation to help get relaxed.
85% of participants said they will need to draw their attention from the anxiety.
Triangulated Insights
User needs / Problems
Feel anxious about the physical hospital environment
Feel uncomfortable about the sanitizer smell
Try to distract themselves and kill time
Natural environment such as forest and beach are relaxing
Design Goals
Use VR headsets to guide them to a relaxing virtual world.
Use aroma to help them relax and ignore the sanitizer smell
Create an interactive multisensory game for patients to engage in
Use natural scenes, smells and animal characters
Reframing the problem
According to our primary research, we redefined our design question.
"How might we use VR technology combining with aroma to help patients in hospitals reduce healthcare-induced anxiety prior to medical procedures?"
Hardware Design
Essential oil pad
Hardware Components
Lipo battery
Switch
Servo
Fans
ESP32
Hardware Components
Prototypes
Final product
· Control the on/off of 2 fans to provide with different aroma intensity
· Contain four isolated sections for different fragrance oil pods.
· Use a motor servo to choose different fragrances
· Wireless and wearable with a battery integrated
Software Design
In Unity, we used Restclient to transform request and response data to Google Firebase. As users navigated the scene, we sent the distance data and the current scene code to the cloud. Then, in the aroma diffuser, the ESP32 extracts the distance data to control the fans and adjust the odor's intensity. Moreover, the scene code was used to control the spin angle of a motor to adjust the smell it diffuses. Therefore, the smell blends with the scene the user sees in Oculus.
Demo
Each interactive scene is paired with a different scent
After user enter the scene, he will follow the scent and start the adventure.
Forest + Lavendar scent
Beach + Coconut scent
The scent will get stronger and guide the user reach the destination.
Conclusion
In summary, our research points to the feasibility of multisensory interactive VR content when applying VR distraction in medical healthcare. Our work contributes to a novel de-stress game of VR + aroma that can be used to reduce anxiety in high-stress situations such as hospital waiting rooms. With the fast-growing technology and the increasing need for a better medical care experience, there will be more possibilities and demands for the discovery of distraction-based VR therapy.
User testing
We invited 4 participants to the user testing with 5 tasks.
Overall, all the participants are satisfied with the overall experience.
Key Takeaways
1. Lack of onboarding process
Participants reported that it's hard to understand the connection between the NPC animal with the scent.
At the beginning, there aren’t enough instructions for the user to understand the game mechanics.
2. The interaction design of hints are not clear
Users are confused about what to do next after finding the animal.
Upon entering the game, the instruction dialog will disappear after 10 sec, which is too short to read.
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