## Inspiration

Studies show that drawing, coloring, and other art-making activities can help people express themselves artistically and explore their art's psychological and emotional undertones [1]. Before this project, many members of our team had already caught on to the stress-relieving capabilities of art-centered events, especially when they involved cooperative interaction. We realized that we could apply this concept in a virtual setting in order to make stress-relieving art events accessible to those who are homeschooled, socially-anxious, unable to purchase art materials, or otherwise unable to access these groups in real life. Furthermore, virtual reality provides an open sandbox suited exactly to the needs of a stressed person that wants to relieve their emotional buildup. Creating art in a therapeutic environment not only reduces stress, depression, and anxiety in teens and young adults, but it is also rooted in spiritual expression and analysis [2]. We envision an **online community where people can creatively express their feelings, find healing, and connect with others through the creative process of making art in Virtual Reality.**

## VIDEOS:

<https://youtu.be/QXY9UfquwNI>
<https://youtu.be/u-3l8vwXHvw>

## What it does

We built a VR application that **learns from the user's subjective survey responses** and then **connects them with a support group who might share some common interests and worries.** Within the virtual reality environment, they can **interact with others through anonymous avatars, see others' drawings in the same settings, and improve their well-being by interacting with others in a liberating environment.** To build the community outside of VR, there is an accompanying social media website allowing users to share their creative drawings with others.

## How we built it

* We used SteamVR with the HTC Vive HMD and Oculus HMD, as well as Unity to build the interactive environments and develop the softwares' functionality.
* The website was built with Firebase, Node.js, React, Redux, and Material UI.

## Challenges we ran into

* Displaying drawing real-time on a server-side, rather than client-side output posed a difficulty due to the restraints on broadcasting point-based cloud data through Photon. Within the timeframe of YHack, we were able to build the game that connects multiple players and allows them to see each other's avatars. We also encountered difficulties with some of the algorithmic costs of the original line-drawing methods we attempted to use.

## Citation:

[1] <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/groups/art-therapy/connecticut/159921?sid=5db38c601a378&ref=2&tr=ResultsName>
[2] <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/art-therapy>
## Inspiration

Team member's father works in the medical field and he presented the problem to us. We wanted to try to create a tool that he could actually use in the workplace.

## What it does

Allows users to create requests for air ambulances (medically equipped helicopters) and automatically prioritizes and dispatches the helicopters. Displays where the helicopters will be flying and how long it will take.

## How we built it

Java, Firebase realtime database, android-studio, google-maps api for locations

## What we learned

First time integrating google-maps into an android app which was interesting. Firebase has some strange asynchronous issues that we took a lot of time to fix. Android is great for building a quick and dirty UI.

Redbull + a mentor = bug fixes
One challenge that is frequently attributed to the prominence of technology in our lives is a deepening health crises. Gadgets are blamed for all sorts of problems, ranging from loneliness and depression to incidents of public violence. We felt that it would be incredible if we could provide a concrete use case for one of the most powerful tech experiences, VR, that would help seriously establish the technology as a force for good.

Our technology provides two options for mental health services inspired by psychological treatments. In one case, we built a scene to help people get over arachnophobia in an encounter inspired by exposure therapy. In another, we take advantage of VR’s privacy to create a space for mediation. We used the Oculus Quest VR headset for this platform, in light of its popularity and accessibility.

Our two person team approached the workflow in the following manner: Austin built the models in Blender while Ines assembled them in Unity and coded the interactive aspects of the app. We relied very minimally on the asset store, only using it for a couch and chair model, which saved us significant time.

We aspired to create an application that felt accessible to all users, and we drew from a variety of inspirations to accomplish this. We felt that a warm, cozy cabin provided a safe home screen for users that they would enjoy spending time in. Our meditation scene was inspired by the serenity of Morikami Park in Fort Lauderdale, which we sought to replicate in virtual reality. Our design for the phobia treatment was strongly influenced from conversations we had earlier conducted with Ryley Mancine, a researcher at Michigan State University in psychiatric science, on VR in psychological services. His robust knowledge of psychiatry was an invaluable asset in the way we thought about this project.

Unfortunately, the main challenge we faced was what we found to be Oculus Quest’s limited feature set. We had initially imagined incorporating a multi-party aspect to the app, but our inability to use Google cloud services with the Quest made it significantly more difficult. In the end we did not manage to incorporate a multi-party experience for this reason, which was a bummer. We also found that the Quest itself included buggy template scenes which made it difficult to learn how to take full advantage of its functionality. This, coupled with the lack of documentation, made for a disproportionately large time investment to learn relatively simple features, which negatively impacted our workflow.

Having said that, we managed to build a VR app on an emerging platform In only two days. We managed to overcome the compatibility issues, the buggy templates and lack of documentation to create something which could really help somebody. To our knowledge, we count ourselves among the first developing for the med-tech space as it pertains to virtual reality. And we did that with a team of two.

During these two days, we learned a lot about designing for VR. We learned how the Quest interacts with Unity and Blender, how to build scripts for VR from the ground up, and how to optimize model design for the Quest’s constraints. We also learned how to better manage our workflow to maximize production in this extremely time sensitive environment. Lastly, we learned more about pitch construction and marketing technology. HackHarvard has been an extremely positive experience in this respect and we feel invigorated by our experience here.

We think that as we move forward with this technology, we will go back to the drawing board and try to find workarounds for Quest development that will allow us to incorporate more robust features in VR apps. We will certainly further optimize our models (when we can spend weeks instead of hours on them), and we will find better ways to incorporate established practices into virtual use cases.