GrowthXR

Inspiration

It is without saying that VR/AR is an incredibly powerful tool, but we felt that it was underutilized wanted to bring VR into an area that can create a positive impact through utilizing it in novel ways. Reflecting on our own life experiences, we realized that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) had made a positive impact on us and could be enhanced with virtual reality. With over half of all therapists utilizing CBT in their practices in addressing a wide variety of mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, phobias, PTSD, and so much more.

What it does

The platform we created enables and empowers therapists to incorporate the tools of VR and reap the advantages of VR CBT over regular CBT. Catered to the therapists, [platform] allows them to easily generate exercises in VR for CBT therapy for their patients in a safe, easy, controlled, and accessible environment. This platform could be used for “live” or “homework” therapy too. Targeting the therapist instead of the patient, we do not plan to remove the therapists from the equation, recognizing the importance they play in the process and encourage them to utilize GrowthXR in the process

How we built it

We built it through a combination of Unity and Python for Quest2 technology. Some mockups were done in Unreal and some parts were powered with OpenAI, MidjourneyAI and other tools.

Challenges we ran into

Our Quest 2 was not working, with it randomly crashing and connectivity issues. It was the first hackathon for some of us and working with a hybrid team created an interesting experience with often less than half the team-members in person. Additionally, it was a challenge working collaboratively with Unity. There were issues with sharing the projects through git because of the presence of large custom assets. With one device to share amongst the members, we did not really find an effective way to have multiple online members working on VR at the same time. Additionally, we were not as experienced with Unity VR as we had hoped to have been. Learning new tools constantly, this hackathon also served as a great introductions to many technologies in the field.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting everything on Unity took forever and although we couldn’t get the headset to work, to have a mockup of some basic stages really has us pointed in the right direction.

What we learned

Working with Quest2
Unity
OpenAI API
Hybrid Collaboration

What's next for GrowthXR

We hope to flesh out more the VR experience, creating more pre-made rooms allowing us to address a wider set of all the disorders CBT is effective against. We also hope to improve on the rudimentary room generation code, increasing the realism and effectiveness of GrowthXR to achieve even better results. This could also be deployed on the therapists side, providing them a way to see and change the configuration. Additionally, a better connection between the therapist and client on a shared server could make the process of transferring data smoother and even allow the therapists to join the simulation as well as avatars. Lastly, integrating commercial wearable biotech devices to track health data could aid therapists to better understand and track patient progress.