TransScript

Inspiration

Healthcare in the US is a difficult system to navigate, but for 2.1 million transgender individuals, that process is exacerbated by excessive medical gatekeeping and lack of patient advocacy. Oftentimes doctors will require written forms from mental health professionals detailing your ability to consent, ask personal questions about your sexuality and family relationships, or try to play up the risks of treatment. All of this to prescribe medication that is often given to cisgender people without these restrictions.

What it does

We want to give power back to transgender people by simulating the environment in which they will be able to respond naturally to these situations. With each question we'll be able to provide information about what is really being asked and how it might be better to respond.

Advocating for yourself alone can be anxiety inducing, especially if appointments can only be scheduled months in advance and getting a second opinion can be difficult. Feeling confident in your ability to respond appropriately to the situation can decrease stress and allow for a more positive experience with your doctor.

How we built it

Through a combination of Scenery, Blender, Canva, Premier Pro, and Figma we created an AR based experience that can be used in the privacy of your room. In Blender we pulled in free assets and edited them to align with our project’s aesthetic. In Figma we created 2-D UI designs to display the questions, dialog, and narration. Premier Pro was used to edit together a sound scape that fit the environment. Scenery brought all these elements together and allowed us to create a short scene with a single dialog tree.

Challenges we ran into

Since we were new to Scenery there was a large learning curve in which we had to figure out the best work flow. Having everything being on one computer was difficult since we had to switch back and forth on a single computer to keep work evenly distributed. Sometimes the transition between Blender and Scenery had its own issues, sizing and meshes could be disrupted in the transition process. And since Scenery was limited to Apple products we were limited to only a few devices to work from.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Being able to create a working scene in the time that we did felt very rewarding, as well as being able to talk about a topic that we care about and work towards a solution. Many transgender issues are still widely unknown or misunderstood by the general public and being able to talk about them in this setting feels important.

What we learned

We definitely learned a lot about Scenery and how to manage and navigate a project this quickly. Through our research we were able to learn more about actual medical practices when it comes to discussing and treating gender dysphoria and people's lived experiences.

What's next for TransScript

If we were to work on this project further we think there's real potential for us to make a much more realistic experience. The first step would be to create a more realistic space and a more accurate doctor model while still keeping the face very simplistic. Then, using an LLM, we could make a more accurate and real time interaction between “patients” and their “doctors”. If someone asks a question then the dialog could be more natural if being generated in real time. Finally one of the additions we could add would be to pull this into VR or Apple Vision Pros where it would be more effective at immersing the user in the space.

Built With

• blender
• canva
• figma
• premierpro
• scenery