"A team of MDM students decided to tackle this real-world problem – how to do you make people understand what a schizophrenic patient goes through? While exploring various digital solutions, Team Prism hit upon the idea of using virtual reality technology (specifically Oculus Rift) to address this problem.

Team Prism built an interactive digital experience tool in which people could navigate through a schizophrenic patient’s world - in their shoes. They would hear the hallucinatory voices and experience the impact of reduced social connections.

For the project, the team developed a narrative of a teenager called Jackie, whose life turns upside down after a basketball injury makes her schizophrenic. Jackie loses touch with her friends and family, and they in turn struggle to cope with the sudden changes in her personality. The interactive experience allows people to see the world as Jackie sees it – populated with paranoid delusions and suspicious objects. It was a simulation that would be valuable to medical students and professionals who would be closely working with and treating schizophrenic patients.
Guidance from the members of the British Columbia Schizophrenic Society and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia aided the project greatly by helping build a realistic experience.
The project has been well received and mental health professionals who tested it have deemed it a valuable teaching tool. Team Prism is currently working on developing the project further, and extending it to other rare diseases."
Trailer for PRISM project - Virtual Reality experience
User Testing at the University of British Columbia
Team members:
Jonathan Lee: Project manager
Hyunchul Jung: Lead 3D designer
Arushi Nagar: Documentation
Jesica Ortega: Concept designer
Duong Tran: Sound designer, junior 3D designer
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT:

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