solas

Inspiration

It can't be denied that there is massive stigma around mental health and its associated symptoms. One of such symptoms, hallucinations, can come from a range of mental disorders, namely schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. Many of these individuals do not get any form of treatment or support, and may even feel discouraged from seeking out support due to social stigmas. We need to empower those who experience hallucinations and give them the tools that will uplift them, and allow them to take back control of their lives.

What it does

solas is a digital-physical product that seeks to give those that experience auditory and visual hallucinations a way to find clarity amid the chaos that hallucinations may bring. The physical component is a pair of glasses, enhanced with AR capabilities, haptic gestures, and built-in cameras. The associated digital aspect is a mobile app, which can pair to the user's glasses and allow them to adjust the glasses to their preferences and needs. When users are unsure if what they are seeing or hearing is reality or not, they can equip the glasses and use their chosen visual aids (like blurring or subtitles) to undergo a reality-check.

How we built it

User research To understand our target audience base, we had to do a lot of research into hallucinations, current strategies to cope with hallucinations, and if technology could be a potential method to deal with them. In addition to academic papers, this entailed a good bit of reddit-surfing which helped us get first-hand accounts of people who experience hallucinations. We even got a couple interviews with willing participants.

Defining our solution From our research, we identified key pain points that our target audience is facing. The first being that current solutions are too intrusive and cause insecurity for users, especially when they need to be used in public settings. In addition, many current solutions are not "real-time", which means that individuals cannot get confirmation fast enough to ease their distress that a hallucination is not real. Finally, people that experience hallucinations often force themselves into isolation, because they do not feel comfortable in their environment due to social stigma and lack of control. Thus, solas was crafted with the goal of making a solution that is discreet, real-time, and gives control to the user.

Designing our solution To bring our solution to life, we created a high-fidelity prototype in Figma for our mobile app, as well as creating the perspective of an individual using the AR-enhanced glasses.

Challenges we ran into

In the span of 3 days, we lost more sleep and drank more energy drinks than ever before. Working at that pace was definitely a challenge and we felt the time crunch. Especially during the ideation phase, we spent the whole first evening just deciding what direction we wanted to take. With each potential direction came many questions about scope, specific user concerns, and potential risks. Even with solas, it was one of our first ideas, but we were hesitant to pursue it due to the possibility that many of our target audience would have a level of tech paranoia. However, when we continued to brainstorm through concerns such as that, we came to solutions that addressed these points and created a better, stronger product overall. Therefore, we all saw firsthand how valuable it is to identify concerns of your users, so that you can address them in your solution.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

All of us put a lot of work into this app, and we are all proud of what we were able to deliver in this time period. Especially as this app addresses a social need that is often overlooked, we are happy that we got this opportunity to bring more awareness on this topic, and hopefully inspire similar projects down the line.

What we learned

We learned a lot about pushing through the ideation phase, and the importance of digging deep into user research to create an informed understanding of our user audience. Aside from design lessons, each of us learned a lot about hallucinations, how they manifest, how they vary from person-to-person, and how they are addressed in clinical and everyday settings.

What's next for solas

solas addresses is a unique solution that addresses long-standing pain points. Though, hallucinations do go beyond the auditory and the visual. We'd love to expand solas to incorporate ways to identify olfactory and tactile hallucinations as well, ensuring that solas can serve as wide an audience as possible.