Inspiration
As a team, we were very interested in the idea of mitigating human trafficking, as it is a serious situation that has affected the places we grew up in, as well as being a global problem. Many times these victims are only exposed to healthcare workers as their sole link to society. This typically occurs in the emergency department, and many of these healthcare workers do not have adequate training to recognize these signs of human trafficking (which aren't always obvious).
What it does
It is a VR Role-Playing Training Experience that seeks to educate healthcare workers in recognizing and taking steps to mitigate human trafficking by immersing them in the situation in relation to their environments. These scenarios are designed for multiplayer interaction with human actors, but can also be experienced offline as a simulation.
How we built it
Using Unity and its built-in Oculus integration, we designed a VR experience based off of interviews with real healthcare workers, supplemented with secondary research from organizations such as Polaris, HEAL, and NIH.
Challenges we ran into
Actually deciding to work in VR happened late in the design process. Furthermore, honing in on this one problem was a complicated decision, since there are many aspects of human trafficking that can be addressed.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We have a fully functional prototype that can be run directly on any VR headset that accepts .apk files. Also, we were able to iterate over our concept with many mentors to ensure that this experience is desirable.
What we learned
We learned many specifics of human trafficking that are only visible to healthcare providers, as well as the steps that are currently being taken to address this problem. In addition, we have learned a lot about developing for the Emergency Department and Pain Points experience.
What's next for SimuLearn
Integrating multiplayer and multiple scenarios for every healthcare worker.
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