VR Mindfulness Training

A VR Intervention

Client:

With the explosion of different social media platforms, teens today are only at higher risks of experiencing cyber bullying. To help tackle this issue, PTE partnered with Virginia Commonwealth University to design and build an interactive VR intervention for high school teens.

This gamified intervention places you in the shoes of a student who starts out their school day being humiliated on a fictional social media app called Snapsta. As your day progresses and you are repeatedly provoked, you learn three mindfulness and awareness exercises that teach you how to acknowledge your emotions and regain control over the situation.

The immersive nature of VR allowed us to find a creative solution to a key design problem: how do we effectively teach exercises that in real life are performed entirely within your own mind?

We developed the idea of the “headspace,” a transformative space where your emotions are personified (into what we affectionately termed EmotoBlobs internally). This personification serves the role of narrator throughout the experience, providing both gameplay and emotional instruction.

This game was just the pilot! We’re happy to say we’ve begun development on a second educational intervention.

Visual Development