Ringos Underwater Adventure

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Ringos Underwater Adventure

• Catherine Zanbaka
• HCI Masters ProjectNovember 14, 2002

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Problem

• Cancer presents an ongoing challenge to medical
  community
• Children especially prone mental strain
  associated with procedures for cancer treatment
• Many learn to fear cancer treatments, and the
  environments associated with them
• Ultimately, mental anxiety becomes much worse
  than the actual procedure itself!

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But can you really distract pain?

• Pain perception has strong psychological
  component
• The same incoming pain signal can be interpreted
  as painful or not
• Pain requires conscious attention!
• Use VR to draw the patients attention into
  another world

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Current Techniques
Current pain distraction methods at the AFLAC
center
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Why Use Virtual Reality?

• Immersion
• One Handed
• Control over duration and difficulty

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Ringos Underwater Adventure

• Description an immersive 3D virtual environment
  
• Goal to reduce the pain and anxiety associated
  with childrens cancer treatment
• Method draws attention away from discomfort by
  engaging children in the interactive and
  exploratory game

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Information Gathering

• Took a tour of AFLAC Cancer Treatment Center of
  Eggleston Childrens Hospital to gather info
  about task environment
• Interviewed 3 people who have personal experience
  with cancer treatment
• Child Life Specialist at AFLAC center
• A leukemia patient
• A graduate student who conducted extensive
  observation of cancer patients at the AFLAC
  Cancer Treatment Center for her thesis

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User Characteristics

• Primary Users Children, ages 5 to 8, undergoing
  cancer treatment such as chemotherapy. May suffer
  from both physical weakness and mental anxiety.
• Secondary Users Medical professionals who are
  preoccupied with their primary duties and do not
  have time to supervise patients computer use.
  Their computer skill level varies.

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Task Environment

• Hospital treatment rooms that may be shared by
  many patients
• Environmentally controlled and medically sterile

Infusion chair at AFLAC Center
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Interface Implications

• Minimal Administration by medical staff
• System must be quick to activate and easily
  learned
• Patients often only one hand free and may be
  weak, so input devices must be light and easily
  controlled with one hand
• Interactive environment must not be so intense
  that patients squirm or jerking, possibly
  dislodging intravenous needles

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Sample Devices
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Related Work

• Virtual Gorilla was not designed for pain
  distraction but for teaching principles of social
  gorilla behavior. Scared younger patients!
• SpiderWorld Originally designed to treat spider
  phobics, but effective for distracting burn
  victims. Also scary!
• SnowWorld specifically designed for treating
  pain

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With this in mind
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The Birth of Ringo

• Storyboarding and scenarios
• Several iterations of modeling and testing how
  the feel of the environment
• Experimented with multi-modality such as speech
  recognition, but this proved unsuitable for the
  gaming environment

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Ringo - Game Objective

• Goal of Game help Ringo save his friends from
  octopus
• To Gain Points swim through rings, eat worms
• Avoid shark attacks, hooked worms

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Specifications for Ringo

• Written in C/C
• SVE Toolkit
• Models created in 3D Studio Max
• Key framed animations

• 3D spatial sounds effects
• head tracking with HMD
• Joystick or 3D Puck for input/navigation
• Runs on a PC

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Screenshots
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Screenshots
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Screenshots
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Screenshots
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Screenshots
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Screenshots
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Video Clips

• Video with sound
• Flash Video

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Future of Ringo

• Add new scenes and sound effects
• Get IRB approval for testing
• Conduct user testing with children at the
  hospital
• Analyze results
• Improve according to findings
• Write a paper

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Acknowledgments

• Current MembersLarry Hodges -  Associate
  Professor, CCBDiane Gromala  -  Associate
  Professor, LCCChris Shaw - Senior Research
  Scientist, CCBCathy Zanbaka   -  HCI Masters
  Student
• Former MembersRobert Hill           -  Sound,
  IDT u-gradDavid Petrides     -  3-D Modeling,
  IDT u-gradDawn Pendergast -  Storyboarding, IDT
  u-gradLaura Mwirigi -  3-D modeler, IDT master's
  student

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Questions?