SanctuARy

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Overview

A mental wellness app that combines audio AR, local community, and nature.

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Inspiration

The Microsoft Design Expo consisted of a several-month informal internship in which each team was tasked with designing a user experience prototype that embodied the theme “Designing for a Healthier Future.” I proposed the idea of an augmented reality app that would allow participants to explore therapeutic immersive spaces and teamed up with several classmates who were excited about this idea.

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We aimed to design a playful and accessible experience for underserved communities that draws upon community-oriented psychology and helps to alleviate negative thought patterns induced by light trauma.

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Approach

One of the main difficulties that arose in framing our solution space was deciding whether we wanted to create an actual substitute to therapy versus a therapeutic experience. We decided to go with the latter, which could supplement therapy or appeal to people who were interested in improving or maximizing their psychological health, but not necessarily struggling with mental health issues.

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We decided to focus on making authoring tools instead of pre-existing content from cultural outsiders, as we thought this would be more empowering and appealing to members of underserved communities. As the only team member with Unity and XR design experience, I was responsible for designing and developing the concrete specifics of the app prototype:

• The app would allow users to design their own immersive audio “sanctuaries,” which would consist of mixtures of recordings of nature sounds, guided meditations, or inspiring personal stories paired with 3D model decorations.
• These sanctuaries could be set up for non-linear exploration. For example, particular areas could trigger particular audio tracks as you enter them.
• Once they finish authoring a sanctuary, users would upload it to the cloud.
• Users could view a localized map populated with markers of these sanctuaries at the GPS coordinates where they were uploaded.
• They could navigate to the specific point of a sanctuary using the map and enter “inside” of it to explore the immersive audiovisual space.

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Outcome

A proof-of-concept demoing the localized map of sound sanctuaries, the immersive audiovisual exploration mode, and the authoring tool for creating a new sound sanctuary.

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Demo

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User Flow

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Tech Stack

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Slides from Final Presentation