STRESSLESS
An app that reduces stress and anxiety through calming VR environments.
THE ISSUE
Attending a competitive school, many of the students at my high school face stress, anxiety, and depression - a cycle that is constantly reinforced by high academic pressure. We identified this issue to be one of the largest, if not the largest issue that our school faced. About 17% of teens admitted to have considered suicide in the U.S. in 2017, and that same year, we unfortunately lost a classmate to suicide. This problem became our focus for the next several months.
RESEARCH AND DESIGN
We began brainstorming ideas to combat the issue, eventually settling on using virtual reality in order to reduce stress through calming environments and meditation. Because virtual reality is incredibly immersive and allows users to ignore the environment around them, we believed this would be the most effective in relieving users of stress.
DEVELOPMENT
In our initial design, we used four sample environments: forest, underwater, beach, and northern lights. Using Adobe XD, I created wireframes for our app. Users would input their initial mood on a Likert scale, and rate their mood again after the VR experience (which would be done using a Google Cardboard for increased accessibility). After presenting our app (made with Android Studio) to the XR EDU Challenge #2, we received feedback on how to make our app more sustainable over time through adding a rewards system, and also using a Likert scale of 1-6 instead of 1-5 to prevent users from choosing the convenient answer of 3. In the future, we want to measure their mood and state using biometric data, such as heart rate, so that there is less bias in reporting.
