Project Description
151 Calories is a immersive virtual reality project where people can experience the psychology state and the daily struggles of people with eating disorders. We particularly focus not only on the consumption of food but on the social and psychological consequences that correlate with eating disorders such as isolation from family/friends and constant self hate.
Team:
Languages:
Javascript, C#
Tools:
Roles:
Team Leader, Programmer,
Graphic Designer, Writer
The
Challenge
Within a timeframe of four weeks, our goal is to create an immersive experience that generates empathy and will help create an emotional bond between the audience and an experience that cannot be experienced normally using virtual reality as a medium.
With eating disorders as our topic, our main obstacle is to prevent being cliche and being overdone by bringing in lesser known aspects of anorexia such as social/psychological consequences to our audience. Along with any technical obstacles, we aim to try to prevent any frictions between people who have experienced eating orders who may encounter our virtual experience.
Our
Insights
NEW PERSPECTIVES
To prevent the experience from being cliche and overdone, we showed a lesser known side such as the social/psychological consequences that come with anorexia to our audience.
BEING AWARE
We aimed to prevent any possible frictions between our project and audiences who may have previously experienced eating orders if they come across the project.
MIRROR + SCALE
Player gets on the scale. Your reflection gets wrapped and you points out the problems with your body with constant self hate comments.
FRIDGE
All foods have a rejection sign over the object except an apple, which is a healthy choice of food. Character will prevent player from eating and recommend player to exercise once more.
EXERCISE
Player goes to lift dumbbells in their room. Each time the player finishes a rep, they will comment either about the progress or give hints about their lifestyle.
MY ROLE
TEAM LEADER
My role as the leader was to ensure the visual design, language and quality of the project was consistent and the topic was being portrayed accurately with minimal frictions.
UNITY CODER
Unity Coder in charge of creating interactive AIs with animated responses and other interactive assets (ie. Mirror, Scale,
Camera effects).
GRAPHIC
DESIGNER
Created main poster & brochure that was send out to the media and used for the SFU "Immersive Environments" Showcase
In four weeks, create an immersive experience that generates empathy by using virtual reality as a medium.
personal goal
We wanted our audience to experience something they could not by normal means and by the end of the experience, to have a strong emotional bond with the story or characters.
the project
With young people focused on dieting or other beauty trends, people find it hard to understand the difficulties or struggles of eating disorders, leading to ignorance and lack of empathy.
A project for people to deepen their understanding on eating disorders.
A first person point-of-view experience would be more intimate and emotionally impacting for the audience to understand the topic.
INSIGHT
OUR
INTERACTIONS
All scenarios and events in our virtual reality experience were based on our research from sources like documentaries to more personal places like pro-anorexia forums.
Personal sources were particularly valuable because we were out about their daily life, fears and interactions with friends plus families.
FRIEND
A friend visits with food. The player attempts to hide food to avoid suspicion. Players can hide foods doing various actions. Storyline progresses as player interacts with NPC.
