TPL4

Meeting with advisors

Had meetings with:

Amy Hurst — Thesis advisor

Christina Sanders — Director of Clinical Operations

Genavae Dixon — Mental Health and Wellness Coordinator

Meeting with Amy Hurst:

Overall meeting went very well and there are multiple avenues I can go into. She set me straight with my terminology and how I need to separate the terms into mental health and people with disabilities or emotional therapy which is not considered to be in the clinical sense of mental health.

Amy put me in contact with Dr. Ron W. Kosinski who is in charge of running the Oral Health Center for People With Disabilities. He along with Amy and Anita Perr are looking for more applications to help them develop something for their multi-sensory room. The dentist chair can be a scary place for a child so providing a clamming experience for them is something I would be interested. Anesthesia is usually used to to calm down the child, so having another non-invasive procedure would be ideal for parents as well.

Using VR

Amy suggested several areas to develop in VR:

• VR tour of the hospital and demonstration of how the hospital works.
• Putting 360 videos, 3D pictures in a web platform that can be used on a wide variety of devices.
• Check ups — Using VR to distract the patient in doing a check up. While they have the headset on, they will be shown why they need a check up and what they need to do during one.
• Providing a story that teaches sneaking in a candy bar to eat at night is ok, only if you sneak in brushing your teeth right after. Providing a fun way to educate children on preventing cavities.

My main take-aways from my meeting with Amy were, getting in contact and see if this application could be used as a priming tool for children who are not use the procedures a dentist has to make. Having the children being prepped, a clear expectation is demonstrated, and most kids with ASD prefer a clear list of expectations rather than spontaneous plans. Giving the patients something to engage in before they are at the dentist would be interesting to explore.

Meeting with Genavae and Christina:

I have worked with both Genavae and Christina during my time as a ABA therapist, about six years ago. Genavae Dixon works with youth outreach and counseling for high schoolers for suicidal prevention. Christina Sanders is a Director of Clinical Operations in the Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) field. We had a long discussion about remote therapy now, and how high schoolers and children with ASD are reacting to remote teaching and treatment.

In ABA the areas to focus on are:

After demoing the Face tracking application, we brainstormed some ideas around how they could use the application in their settings.

• Therapists are considered essential workers, so most of the therapy are in-person or on zoom
• Telehealth applications, lots of healthcare companies are using telehealth apps to administer treatment still.
• ABA therapy — Some are using zoom and third part online applications for reinforcement.
• ABA therapists are getting too exhaustive over using zoom.
• The face tracking app could help for non-verbal patients and how they can be prompted to interact with a character that is reacting to them naturally and not with an automated device.
• Social encounter — scenario based functionality. The application could be used to teach kids several different types of social encounters. Perhaps the therapists could see what their client chooses and see live data feeds.
• ABA training tool — Therapists could use the tool to train other therapist and do something similar to a role playing type of training. The live motion capture might feel more real and the feedback is something people will react more strongly towards than an automated response. Similar to a CPR training, Kognito, Central Reach, and Relias are some of the training simulations that the ABA field uses. Most of these applications are automated and have no real live interactions that the therapist could engage with.

In High School and Mental Health:

When talking with Genavae, her perspectives came from mostly working with high schoolers and how they are coping with online teaching remotely.

After showing the demo, she and I brainstormed these main areas:

• Zooms are at the same time, as therapy, so sometimes the counselor can’t get a one on one with the student.
• Emotional needs are not met with the teacher over zoom or other online applications. The human element is lost. With telehealth applications the camera is not turned on, speech with chat are most students are doing.
• The more students feel anonymous, perhaps they are more likely to express their thoughts. In both the high school setting and the ABA settings — both Christina and Genavae have seen more participation with kids who feel their is no on-screen pressure to do something. Having the typed response or hidden, seems to be comfortable for some students.
• Having a game based application provides a nice transition from online learning to treatment based procedures. They both mentioned Animal crossing and how having an Avatar or another world to go into would be an interesting concept to explore. Peer to peer live actions and talks could help more in the suicide prevention procedures. The 3D avatar could be an actual person they can talk to, rather than an automated response.

These meetings were very inspiring. I definitely see some overlap with some of the needs of the multi-sensory room and the field of mental health and ABA. Kids need an application that preps them from transitioning from one space into another. The magical transition could consist of mix of using a headset, projection or using the iPhone with the face tracking app. I think for my next steps I need to decide how that application will look like and what will be the most complete prototype I can build for this type of product. I know I would like use the multi-sensory room to test this application out.

New project path: To create an application that demonstrates how the dental check up will go before the patient comes into the room. The application could work on a headset or website. I can create an application where the doctor can puppet a character in an environment that introduces the world in a way that could be fun and engaging with the child.