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Dr. Hieftje recently wrote a blog for Revolutionary Learning about her thoughts on bringing virtual reality education games and interventions to the classroom. You can read her blog here!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything and so much is happening!

In December, we were given the green light from Oculus to build out smokeSCREEN VR and conduct a randomized controlled trial with teens this Spring! This is an exciting project to be a part of for many reasons.

First, I am excited that we get to build out our team and bring in more great minds.  I’ll be introducing everyone in my next post. We are still looking for one additional team member, so if you are interested in what we are doing, please reach out!

Second, we get to build out our game! Our first prototype was really cool, but I’m excited to take what we’ve learned and create a more polished, engaging game around JUUL/e-cigarette prevention. We are working closely with PreviewLabs right now to create new features, minigame activities, and content.

Third, Space Cats is coming to life. In smokeSCREEN VR, the characters reference a game called Space Cats on several occasions. This game becomes a bonding moment for the player and his crush, Priya. For this next interation of the game, we have included a minigame based on Space Cats that will be used as an incentive for the player to pay attention to the content and skill-building activities. The better you do in the overall game, the more items and time you unlock in the minigame. The concept is simple: You are in Space. There are robot cats flying toward you. You must take them all out. Levels unlock with different cats, armor, and weapons. There is a final cat boss. Cats in Space, need I really say more?

Fourth, we get to take VR to schools and work with teachers and students and school administration.  We are so excited to bring this experience to teens and make a difference in their behaviors associated with JUUL/E-cigarettes. I will be writing more about this topic which will be featured on VRWORLDTECH.com mid-March.

Finally, we get to explore how VR can impact learning and health. There is so much potential in this area and I can’t wait to dive in and learn from teens, teachers, and others over the next year.

Stay tuned, folks!

We’ve been having a lot of fun working on the videogame here at the lab this week.

In smokeSCREEN VR, there are several references to a fictional videogame called Space Cats. Everyone is playing Space Cats – I’m not quite sure what the appeal is, but everyone seems to love it. So yesterday we decided to make a short looping video that is an obvious reference to the Space Cats, which will be on a television in the party scene of the game. Here is an early version of the scene with the TV as a reference:

We made a green screen from a few yards of green material and tacked it the wall at my house.  We also made several planets using styrofoam balls, paint and glitter and tied them to a clear string on a wooden stick. Then we found a $2 green screen app for the iphone that did a pretty good job, in my opinion, of creating a space background.

We shot about 15 minutes of my cat, Nikki, in space playing with the planets.  This was the best 20 seconds….

I love my job.

I thought I knew enough about vaping to start writing the narrative and content for this game. Boy, was I wrong! This past year, I’ve helped write the content for the 2D version of the tobacco prevention videogame, smokeSCREEN. I’ve conducted over a dozen focus groups with teens about vaping and am the author on two separate manuscripts that focus on e-cigarette prevention and flavored tobacco (one recently published and the second on is under review in Addictive Behaviors). I thought this experience would surely give me a solid foundation for writing the content for smokeSCREEN VR.

And then the rug was pulled out from under my feet by twenty high school students (11^th grade students from various high schools in CT) that filled out an anonymous survey I posted online last week.

Last year, when I talked with teens and wrote the content for the 2D version of smokeSCREEN, teens were indeed vaping but it wasn’t as prominent as it is today. They had misconceptions about the safety of e-cigarettes (most believed e-cigarettes only contained “water vapor”, did not contain nicotine, and were not addictive), and the devices they had access to were rather bulky and produced large clouds of vapor (which were used to impress others with cool tricks). Teens were vaping for the fun flavors, and it was an opportunity to “look cool” in front of their peers.

How quickly things change in a year. According to the survey, teens are still vaping primarily for the flavors and to appear “cool” in front of their friends, but the devices and the language they are using to talk about vaping are uniquely different. Perhaps most alarming, though, is the seemingly high incidence of vaping in teens (82% reported having tried vaping or currently vaping at the time of the survey!) and their continued misperceptions about the safety of e-cigarettes.

I think one of the biggest take-aways I got from the survey is that teens don’t “vape”. Rather, they JUUL. A JUUL is a small, battery operated, USB-looking e-cigarette that can easily be hidden in the palm of your hand. It is fueled by a tiny cartridge called a JUULpod (or “pod” for short) that comes in a variety of flavors such as mint, cucumber, and mango. It produces very little vapor and kids are able to discretely use them in places like the back of the classroom. Oh, but no one uses terms like vape or e-cig or vape pen now– they use the collective term JUUL. For instance:

“Can I borrow your JUUL?”

“Rachel got caught JUULing in the school bathroom.”

“Wanna JUUL?”

In our game, we are trying to help teens practice refusal skills so that when they are confronted with peer pressure situations that involve vaping they will know how to say no but in a cool way. In my head, I imagined writing about situations were teens are pulling out their vape pens at parties or in the back of the school and saying things like, “C’mon! Its only water vapor, its not going to hurt you. Just try it!”.   The teens that responded to our survey (and that we had conversations with), explained that the opposite actually happens. Teens are pressuring JUUL-owners to let them take a hit (or “rip”) if they don’t have their own. A JUUL is a hot commodity – some teens sell a rip for $3 each. I won’t even get into “pod dealers” and how much money these teens are making off their peers.

I digress. In order for this game to connect to our teen audience, it has to feel authentic. So, as of this week, this game isn’t about vaping anymore (even though it is), it is about JUULing. And pod dealers. And JUULing in the back of the classroom.

Thank you, anonymous teenagers for setting me straight. I’ll be reaching back out to you soon.

 

 

 

 

Status Update from the Prototype Development Side

Written by Jordan Lipton of PreviewLabs

In November, we announced our partnership with the play4REAL Lab at Yale’s Center for Health & Learning Games to create SmokeSCREEN VR. This serious game prototype is to be used as part of a larger research study funded by Oculus. The prototype will combine behavior change theory and virtual reality to immerse teens in peer pressure situations related to e-cigarettes, with the goal being to educate them on how to respond. You may have heard about this project on our blog , or have come by VR Focus’s coverage. As we continue to work on the first iteration of the prototype, here is a status update to shed some light on the process.

Preparation by Play4REAL Lab

One of the most important factors going into the creation of these peer pressure situations is ensuring that the teenagers playing the game can relate to it.

Conducting Focus Groups

Earlier in the year, the play4REAL Lab conducted many focus groups with teenagers to talk about e-cigarettes. As a result, they were able to gain an understanding surrounding the language teenagers use in situations with e-cigarettes. Interestingly, teenagers do not frequently call them ‘e- cigarettes’, especially when referring to the popular JUUL e- cigarette. The JUUL is easily hidden, looks like an inconspicuous USB stick, and the small pod of liquid to vaporize contains the equivalent in nicotine of a pack of cigarettes. For instance, teenagers do not usually ask their friends, ‘would you like to come vape my e-cigarette in the bathroom?’. Instead, they would say, ‘come hit the JUUL in the bathroom’ or ‘we’re JUUL-ing in the bathroom, come through’. It is crucial for the game to accurately reflect the dialogue being used among teens.

Using a Game Playbook

After conducting focus groups with local teenagers, the play4REAL Lab has been combing through existing research as a way of preparing content for the game. This process
has helped formulate the situations that teens go through, as well as information regarding the dialogue that is used amongst teens. The play4REAL Lab created a Game Playbook that contains a summary of their research, what the variables are that they want to influence in the audience, as well as other information such as the findings from the focus groups. It is not a ‘gameplay book’ about gameplay. It is like a football playbook, but for serious games; its purpose is to assist in the creation of evidence-based, theory-driven games.

Brainstorming and the PDD

Before the first iteration of the prototype, PreviewLabs and the play4REAL Lab held a brainstorming session together, something we frequently organize for our clients in order to come up with different concepts. The results were captured in a report, allowing us to efficiently review them and decide on a feature set for the first prototype which can then be prototyped and compared to each other.

Based on this feature set, we put together a Prototype Design Document (PDD), which we will update throughout the lifecycle of the prototype, ensuring both teams are on the same page before the start of each iteration. The PDD includes aspects regarding the prototype’s general information, description, as well as additional ideas and tuning parameters. You can see an example of one of our PDDs here.. Together, the PDD and Game Playbook drive forward the whole process. They provide an outline of the theory-based components that will contribute to heath behavior change, and the resulting requirements to be included in the game design.

As a result of this process, we determined that the first iteration of the smokeSCREEN VR prototype will include four situations represented in virtual reality as conversations with peers. The player can select options to respond with as a way to practice the refusal skills necessary to avoid being peer pressured into trying vaping or e-cigarettes.

First Prototype Iteration

There are many interesting features that we are currently working on for the first prototype iteration:

Ambisonic Audio

A special technique for gathering and using audio recordings, ambisonic sound effects are captured by four microphones pointed in different directions in order to gather a full 360 degree representation of sound. Together, the play4REAL Lab and PreviewLabs are working with Andrew Schartmann, an affiliate faculty member at Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts and Media and PhD candidate in music theory who focuses on the use of audio in projects. It is important in our efforts to try and create social peer pressure. We want the player to really feel as if they are in this situation. Andrew will use dynamic music and sound effects to achieve the desired emotional response to peer pressure.

In addition, we are looking into combining ambisonic audio with spatial audio, which contains mono sound files positioned at certain coordinates in 3D. While ambisonic sounds allows the user to recognize where a sound comes from, it records all sounds at once. For any sounds that have to be played at a specific time based on user interaction, we need to position mono sounds – combining conventional spatial audio as used in games with ambisonic ambient sound recordings. We will be having discussions with Oculus’s audio engineers to learn about their findings and best practices regarding audio integration in general and ambisonic audio specifically.

Simulating the Use of a Smartphone in VR

Besides talking, teenagers frequently communicate through their phones. So, apart from the dialogues in the game, the player will also be able to send and receive messages through their phone with other characters in the game. When you look at your phone in the game, the world around you

will fade out and you will see a huge phone interface in front of you – which we believe would result in the most comfortable phone experience in VR. This is included in the prototype so we can try and see if this is actually true.

Voice Recognition

We are including voice recognition, so a player will have to speak in order to refuse peer pressure. Not only will the player have to think through what they are going to say, but they now have to actually speak the words. This is vital to the goal of the project, as players can practice saying words and sentences that will help them refuse peer pressure situations in the real world. In order to really replicate a real world environment, we thought it would be best to say the words instead of simply selecting the phrase to respond with. The player will need to have the text visual in order to see the options for what to read.

Going Forward

While we are currently working on the first prototype iteration, we are excited for more iterations and the project as a whole. As we complete future iterations, we will be sure to update you with our progress!

 

The Importance of Conducting Focus Groups Before Game Development Begins

I can’t talk enough about the importance of conducting focus groups with your target audience before delving into game design and development.

As part of the play2PREVENT team at Yale, I’ve been conducting focus groups with youth and young adults aged anywhere from 5 to 25 over the past nine years. Input from focus groups have served to inform the development of all of our games, including the risk reduction videogame, PlayForward: Elm City Stories, the humorous, sexual risk reduction card game, One Night Stan, the math game, Knowledge Battle, and our tobacco prevention videogame, smokeSCREEN. It only makes sense to me that we would continue this essential practice at the play4REAL Lab to inform the development of our VR game, smokeSCREEN VR.

During the month of November, we conducted three focus groups with adolescents from the New Haven area. We asked questions to get at their attitudes and perceptions of e-cigarette use and social pressure. We asked about their opinions on teens that use e-cigarettes, what they knew/didn’t know about vaping, why they believed teens vaped, and what the consequences were to getting caught for vaping at school (or by their parents!).   To better understand social pressure, we asked teens what it might feel like to be pressured into doing something they didn’t want to do, how they would respond to get out of situations, and what they believed the consequences and/or rewards to giving in to social pressure.

From the focus group transcripts, we created a short report on the responses we heard and themes that emerged from our discussions with teens. We also included quotes and a list of common terms or phrases the teens used, which will be used to inform the content and narrative in the game. The report we generated was given to our game development team, PreviewLabs, and was reviewed during our initial brainstorm meeting last week. As we move forward in our game development, we will continue to bring our story ideas, use of mechanics, and the language we use to teens for feedback. Our ultimate goal is create a game for teens, about teens. And we can’t do this without constant feedback and input from teens!

Another bit of advice I would give to those interested in conducting focus groups to inform your game design (aside from bringing pizza), is to try to think of creative ways for teens (or anyone really) to express their ideas to you. For example, we know teens spend A LOT of their time on social media and communicate mostly via text messaging. As a way to capture what social pressure might look like in the form of text messages, we asked teens to create text conversation examples using a template we provided.

To read more about focus groups can inform the process of developing a videogame intervention, read here.

In our next blog, we will talk about our first brainstorm session with PreviewLabs, and our development of the project’s Game Playbook, which will help guide the development of the game with a focus on learning/transformational goals and our research outcomes.

The play4REAL lab and our Fall ForAGirl Event! 

Our team spent most of last week putting together the lab space and common area so that we could host our ForAGirl Fall event. Cindy and Cindi at Oculus pushed hard to make sure we had our Gear VR, Samsung phones, and Oculus Rift for the event – I really can’t thank them enough for all their efforts!  In all, the day was nearly perfect.  Here were the main takeaways that my team and I took from the event:

The Oculus Rift was easy to set up and use.  This was my first time setting up the Rift on my own, and it was quite simple and straight forward.  Initially, we tried to set up the Rift to use with Steam VR, but couldn’t get that to work – we kept getting the same error (error 400: Compositor not available).  Given the time constraints, we ended up giving up on Steam VR and using the Rift through the Oculus library.  We will revisit the Steam VR issue at some point in the near future.

The setup for the Gear VR was straightforward, but a bit time consuming.  We had six Gear VRs and six Samsung Galaxy 8 phones in total.  The hand controllers for the Gear VR were the biggest issue.  They wouldn’t stay calibrated, which became an issue later when we had kids play using them.  In the end, we ditched the hand controllers and had the kids use the touch pads instead. This is something we will need to think about as we move into the development of smokeSCREEN VR, which we will be developing for both the Gear VR and the Rift.  I am also interested to see how the Oculus Go will work in terms of set up and implementation into schools for our pilot study this spring.

           

It was such an amazing experience to watch kids experience VR, most for the very first time.  I had the best job, giving each kid a turn on the Rift. I was impressed with how quickly they picked up on how to play Job Simulator with little to no instruction on how to use the hand controllers or how to navigate the VR space.  Kids grabbed, threw, and picked up virtual items with ease. They bent down to look into cabinets on the floor level and put their hands (and heads) into into pots of virtual boiling water.  Most of them tested the limits of the game, while others stuck to playing by the “rules”.   Kids preferred the Rift over the Gear VR hands down.  In terms of setup and ease of use, I also preferred the Rift. This is something to think about moving forward as we try to optimize the experience for smokeSCREEN VR on the Gear VR (or Oculus Go) when we go into schools.

     

We also had a projection set up in the lab where kids could watch others play on the Rift.  There was a lot of coaching and interaction from those that were watching and not playing – this is interesting to think about as we consider how to create the feeling of social pressure in the game (or perhaps outside the game as well?)

In total, we had about 23 kids at the ForAGirl event. We initially capped it at 20 (with a sign up sheet for 25 in case some didn’t come) to ensure we were able to provide kids with enough hands-on experience of VR.   Our team got some invaluable hands-on experience with VR hardware and software set up and trouble shooting, which will undoubtedly prepare us for the spring pilot with kids at schools.  Watching the kids interact with both the Rift and the Gear VR (as well as their interaction of watching each other play) has given us a lot to think about moving forward with the development of smokeSCREEN VR.

Next steps?  Focus groups with teens in the community next week.  We want to learn more from the experts (teens) about vaping and social pressure.  Stay tuned!

~Kim