V-Talk

Project Overview

In today's fast-paced world, white-collar professionals often endure significant stress from both their work and personal lives, leaving them in search of relief and support. The prevailing cultural stigma surrounding mental health, combined with their hectic schedules, makes it challenging for them to seek traditional therapy. Recognizing this, we developed V-Talk, an anonymous mobile app designed to provide "casual therapy" in a virtual space where individuals can connect, share, and express themselves freely.

We decided to use the metaverse and virtual characters instead of traditional profiles to enhance user privacy and engagement in a unique and immersive environment. Assigning virtual characters that reflect users' moods and personalities ensures anonymity and fosters a comfortable space for open discussions. The metaverse's innovative appeal acts as a compelling draw, with its potential for future expansions such as avatar customization and accessory additions enriching the user experience. Opting against direct messaging and other complex socializing features, we aimed to keep the app straightforward, emphasizing our primary goal of providing a safe, focused space for white-collar professionals to seek support and connection.

What it does

V-Talk creates a platform where users are masked with a virtual identity to freely chat with others facing similar dilemma

Room Assignment
In the room assignment and character construction stage, users will answer a few questions posed by our AI assistants regarding their mood and dilemma. Then, the AI algorithm will use their answers to create a virtual identity for the user and assign them into rooms, where users with similar needs chat and find solutions together.

Virtual Chatting
Virtual characters walk in a themed room. Whenever they come close to another character, a live call starts where users can freely chat with each other to complain about a difficult boss or seek others' suggestion about how to strengthen bonds with colleagues. User voices are processed to mask identity and protect privacy.

Scope of the Problem

There is a pressing need to approach mental health issues proactively rather than reactively. In 2022, it's reported that almost 60% of office workers have worked despite not feeling well enough mentally. Only a portion of those discuss it with their employers, and even fewer seek therapy. Specifically, 55% of workers who experienced depression said work contributed to their condition, yet only 36% discussed this with their employer, and as few as 34% looked for professional help. Employee perceptions indicate a hesitancy to take sick leave for mental health issues compared to physical ailments, with the data showing people are twice as likely to take time off for physical health issues than for mental health problems.

How we built it

We first researched carefully about a persistent mental health dilemma facing a particular social group. Upon narrowing down our topic, we used Figma to create a prototype for each scenario of usage. Then, we used Java in Android Studio to create the fundamental scaffold for the user interface and adopted a firebase database for login and authentication. For AI components, we introduced transformers for sentiment analysis to best pair users with suitable rooms and used openai-whisper for translating audio into text.

Challenges we ran into

Identifying suitable target user We had ensure that our app was more than a platform that provides general help for all people who face mental health issues. In the end we decided that white-collar professionals face a challenging yet unaddressed issue

Designing therapy themes
We had many debates about what interactive activities to incorporate into the app: chatting, talking, video games, puzzles, tree-planting, etc. Narrowing down the therapy themes and, in the end, making a simple therapy regime was crucial

Technical Challenges with Mobile App Development
All of us were new to Mobile App development. So learning the technical stack of android-studio and firebase database was time-consuming

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creatively incorporating Metaverse with mental therapy themes
Potentially providing an effective outlet for the negative emotions and stresses of white-collar professionals

What we learned

It is important to stick with a relatively simple yet clear project outline -- never try to overlay functionalities and divert user attention
Think with empathy -- what would we, as users, want for the app
Designing straightforward yet ascetically pleasing UI

What's next for V-Talk

Identifying more usage scenarios:

Allowing friend adding on the app
Enable more interactive activities for users to engage in
Gather more details from users to shape more holistic identity in the virtual world to enhance the immersive experience in the Metaverse
Implementation of the animation