BLOG
-
Week 15 – Post-Mortem
What went well [Scope Pivot] Out-of-scope is a kind of keyword for ETC client projects, especially the projects for proof of concepts. Real Empathy is no exception as well. Given an ambitious vision from clients, the biggest challenge in the early development stage is to pivot the scope but also meet the client’s needs at the same time. In our case, clients want a solution for their virtual standardized patient program with clear requirements. The system should be running in Virtual Reality(VR), and needs to use Artificial Intelligence(AI) to respond to students and evaluate the empathy level of trainees. No
-
Week 12 – Evaluation System and Reflection
Evaluation System One of the important pivots we made during the development, is to define ourselves, the Real Empathy system, as an initiator and an exam in the whole training process. Therefore, providing the final report to students for review is as important as the training experience itself. How to evaluate the empathy level of people? It’s hard to quantitatively measure by humans, even impossible by machines. Therefore, we consulted clients and University of Pittsburgh’s standardized program to learn how they evaluate their medical students’ empathetic behaviors. First, we reviewed the checklists from the SP program for student performance evaluation.
-
Week 11 – Final Filming
Final Filming Once again, we arrived at UPMC’s Kuaffman building at 5:30 p.m, since it’s the time-off for the healthcare providers who used to be there. We set up an environment and were ready to film in 30 minutes. Naudia, the doctor who plays the virtual patient in our story, also the client for this project, was ready with the disguise of a woman with the disguise of pregnancy. It’s always embarrassing to occupy a period of time from clients, especially when they have a busy week. However, it brings some pressure for us to do the filming faster and
-
Week 10 – Playtest Day, Guideline, and Reflection
Playtest Week Thanks to the faculty and ETC department efforts, we have a playtest day on the weekend during the mid-semester, which hosts dozens of groups with various demographic guests. The playtest day is such a challenge and a gift for the team to know better about the product’s limitations, the intuition of gameplay, and the excitement level of the experience. Following the schedule, we finished our playable prototype for playtesting one week in advance. To rehearse the playtesting, we decide more guests individually to come and play for this whole week. Considering our target audience is medical students, we
-
Week 9 – Third (Playable) Prototype
Third Prototype Let’s see our third prototype! There are several features added for this version. Cross-fading: We changed the approach to switch the clips from jump-cut to cross-fading. Whenever we switch the clips to play, the system fades out the playing video first, then fade-in the following clip. Cross-fading is a smart approach, but it’s not magic. To make seamless switching, there are several tips to be aware of. We ask actors to always be in the same pose for starting and ending of each response. For example, they can use their hands to reinforce their actions during the conversation,
-
Week 8 – Official Filming
Test Film First Practice makes perfect. The high-quality filmings always require tons of rehearsal. Before including the actress(Naudia) into the scene, we must set up the environment first and test the whole filming process. After the test, we finished a run-down for reminding everyone during the filming. At base: Finish the rundown and print several copies out for the crew to take notes. Ensure the equipment is fully charged, including 360 camera, smartphone(camera remote), and other productivity tools. Bring the chargers and backup camera. (Remote control camera is running out battery rapidly, a back-up camera is necessary) Build a checklist
-
Week 7 – Half Presentation, Review, and Reflection
Milestone: Halfway of the journey Unlike last semester, we are entirely on-site for this semester which means that we need to present it on the stage to the public, with live streaming to the world as well. The tradition makes this occasion memorable. We take our last semester slides as a reference and do some modifications to fit this project’s structure and features. It’s good timing for reflection and review when you organize your slides and think about communicating with the audience. Once again, clarifying the goals, the motivations, the requirements, and the approaches and understanding you are on the
-
Week 6 – Prototype, Playtest, and Iterate
Paper Prototypes When we were in the process of editing videos and integration of AI Chatbot and 360 videos in Unity, we used the paper prototype for playtesting parallelly. From a game designer perspective, I would highly recommend doing paper prototyping in the early stage if possible. Basically, a paper prototype is a good tool to testify to core game flow and concept. It used a very low cost to find the blind spot in gameplay design. For instance, since our main experience is making the conversation, we are ready for our paper prototype when we finish the conversation tree.
-
Week 5 -Filming Consulting and Challenge
Reaching out to the experts Before the meeting, first, we converted our conversation tree to a digital version via Figma. This is a portable and digital version of the decision tree and a necessary process steps from scripts to codes. From my perspective, Figma is not a good tool for starting or final deliverables. However, it’s a good place for temporary transformation. With this digital conversation tree, we could easily demonstrate the scripts to clients and advisors. Our programmer and designer could also work on it and convert it into their ending output(e.g., Voiceflow). Tuesday, we arranged two meetings with
-
Week 4 – Decision and Conversation Tree
Power of accumulation, ETC previous projects There is no new/original idea. Usually, you can find alumni who have dealt with the same situation of viability and scope. Watching their trailers and reading their blogs do help us to explore and test our ideas. Project Kalpana and Project Full Stop are both inspiring works from ETC students in the past. Referring to their empathy-focus projects, we notice they both chose the 360 Video in VR to represent their story. These match the feedback we received from faculty last week. You can only feel empathy when you build a connection with the
-
Week 3 – Mockup and Walk-around
Mockup and Walkaround Walk-around is usually held a week earlier than the quarter. It’s a chance for the team to show our research and the plan for this project. Also, it’s the first time that we are going to meet all the faculty and receive their advice and feedback. We prepare a 5 minute presentation consisting of two segments: project introduction and comparison for undecided solutions. Since our clients highly value immersion and extendability, AI Chatbot and 3D Animated Characters are preferred. However, they are also the hardest combo in our all possible solutions. We need faculty to share their
-
Week 2 – Brainstorming
Benchmarking VR training programs are a trend. There is a lot of research pointing out VR is a better place for training. (e.g PWC’s insight report: How virtual reality is redefining soft skills training https://www.pwc.com/us/en/tech-effect/emerging-tech/virtual-reality-study.html) We did some surveys to see other similar projects/products which have been done before, and to learn how and why they decided from different approaches of solutions. Hired Actors Playing Patients (Traditional and Baseline Solution) AI Chatbot with 3D Animated Patient Project
