INCITE
Incite is a VR experience that uses self-talk affirmations such as “I can do it!” to motivate the player to lift themselves out of a visual and metaphorical darkness to incrementally achieve greatness at the top. The experience is meant to motivate athletes to excel and accomplish their goals.
Roles + Responsibilities
- Lead product idea and presentation
- Prototype and user test
- Design and code app
- Research why this app is necessary and useful
Constraints
This was for a school project, the constraint was the 10 week timeline and no budget.
Context
I chose athletes because I’m an athlete myself, and in the past I have lost motivation for being consistent with my running program. I wanted to help others that might have a similar problem. I found that many athletes have different tricks on how to stay motivated. The one thing that I like the most about this project, is that it’s a choice. It allows the player to make it’s own choice of getting out of the black and white environment. Studies have shown that when a person feels in control, they can use that “motivation for consequences of human behavior, even when they are only illusory”.
Problem Statement
“I feel doubtful of my abilities”
-Athlete
Athletes find it hard to stay motivated when lifestyle things are distracting them, and/or when they don’t feel like themselves. Athletes, just like everyone else, can feel stressed. The NCCA 2017 report, says that only 29% of Males, and 44% of Women have access to a mental care practitioner who understands them, and on average 68% can trust their coach. Athletes who don’t have coaches or generally get pressure to win a game, need even more support to have a positive mind. The reason why this is important to me is, because I sometimes feel like I need motivation for myself when I have to train for a race.
Users + Audience
The type of audience that this experience would target are athletes. Athletes always need motivation to keep doing better in their sport. Generally, it’s a combination of stress or fear that would keep an athlete from thinking that they can’t do something. A study showed that 76% of past Olympian figure skaters would use a coping strategy, like “rational thinking and self-talk” to help themselves. Coaches would be the person to most likely provide the athlete with the VR glasses though. Coaches know that sometimes they can’t communicate well with their athlete, therefore, this is an alternative. Athletes that don’t have coaches, can get this experience for themselves, and they can use it when they feel unmotivated.
Research
Why VR?
Virtual reality has proven to effectively move people’s minds.
There is proven results that it has helped people with cognitive behavioral therapy.
The reason behind the opening scene of a foggy dark environment is to feel the opposite of will come at the end. The end is a bright, sunny, and colorful environment. The end environment looks this way to make the user feel motivated. The fog in the opening makes the user look around until the user sees the text. Also, the dark environment is similar to what the user might be feeling already.
Process
Research + Mapping
Prototype
From Paper to Digital
Flow 1:
1. User standing in a dark cloudy environment.
2. User looks up and sees someone in a hole giving them encouragement.
3. User starts to say motivational sayings.
Lesson
1. Having a person at the top wasn’t going to help the user enough to be motivated, because everyone is different. One person might be motivated by a female, or another by male, or no one at all.
2. Unity skills were still at an early stage, therefore I modified the design, and focused on coding for voice interaction to stay within the timeline.
Using Unity 3D
Testing Voice control prototype via IBM Watson Speech Recognition to see if it would work with the app.
Creating 3D environment prototype
User Testing allowed me to see how people reacted while saying the motivational words and see if I needed to change them.
To begin testing on athletes, I asked five athletes to participate. I gave them the motivational speech that I would want them to say in the experience. Some were given a pdf to read from, and others were given index cards. What I noticed from the overall test, was that everyone is different in amount of motivation that is needed. Some already have enough motivation in them, and others, needed more. I asked them afterwards how they felt, and any opinions they had. Some said that they would have to repeat more to themselves, and others felt a little silly saying it out loud, but enjoyed it. One saying that mostly everyone liked was “I can do this!”. It was the most relatable phrase for everyone to feel like they would really be influenced by the motivation. Although, this test did not use VR, it showed me that I cannot force someone to feel motivated. I can only give an illusion, and the person should choose what they will do afterwards. I also learned that some phrases are more powerful than others, and I should try to find more that people would really like to say without feeling silly.
User Test Motivational Sayings with Five Athletes:
Limits and fears are often an illusion.
I will be better than before!
My Dreams will be reality!
This moment is mine!
I can do this!
Final User Flow
Outcome
“ I would use this every morning for motivation, when I wake up”
I conducted a user test and asked if the person would use the app. I noticed that a lot of people were not able to complete the experience, because IBM voice recognition did not understand the voice if the person had an accent. Based on this user test, this app needs to be tested with the voice recognition more. Also, I’d like to work on the Unity environment. This will help with the increase in users and repetition in using Incite.
