As the school summer session is approaching an end, my road to somewhere is finally opening up. This summer I have been in this Strategic Digital Communication class, as well as doing my thesis. I knew it would be a big workload to do during a condensed semester, but I was eager to finish. I have been on a roller coaster of emotions since the beginning of June.
Since basketball ended I had to shift the energy I normally got out on the basketball court to somewhere else. I think this road to somewhere is my attempt to truly understand who I am as a whole human being.
I work best when I let go. When I stop trying, forget what I am doing, and just flow. I shifted lots of my energy aside from the basketball court to my schoolwork. Whenever people ask me what I want to do when I am older, my response is to be successful. So I try, hard. I was nervous, yet excited to complete my thesis. I was doing a project-based thesis and knew I wanted to work with virtual reality. I have been super interested in learning about this alternate universe people can immerse themselves in since 2018. However, in the beginning, I was unsure of what I wanted to make. So I stopped thinking so hard. I went to my notebook and wrote at the header I wrote: “What I like~ PASSION”. And from there, I flowed. I wrote down my first thought, and then let the pen do the rest of the work; whatever came to mind I wrote until I came up with this:
I value humans coming together -LOVE-
not taking the easy way out- social media.
I value technology + design- the way we create and share.
I value sharing- collaborating.
I value humans coming together.
Boom, an epiphany. I did not realize it at first, and maybe you didn’t either, reading what I just wrote. But all I knew was my thought process circled back around, and in the end, I value humans coming together. And all I thought afterward was how can I make this happen?
Like everything in life, it all started from one simple idea. And from that idea, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to use virtual reality to help autistic children. But how could I do that? One beneficial factor that helped me was my mom worked in a public school with autistic children. I did all of my research, and then I went to her school to witness in-person observations. Prior to the observations, I had an idea to create different colored rooms where each color is associated with a feeling. Each of these rooms would be a place someone can walk into and express those emotions they feel. In the classroom that I observed, I learned that many other classroom settings for autistic children use the Zones of Regulations, which is a curriculum geared toward helping students gain skills in consciously regulating their actions. It felt that my ideas were all finally coming together, and I would create the Zones of Regulation through virtual reality for my thesis.
As I began creating this, I began prototyping one singular room, the red room which is associated with feelings of anger and loneliness. I was creating elements that students can smash and break to release these feelings of anger. However, it felt like there was something more, something was missing. I went back to my research and I tried to understand deeper why many children with autism deter to destructive behavior. It felt like I had the biggest epiphany of my life.
Many children with autism destroy property as a way of coping. If they had a better way to cope then maybe that wouldn't be as harmless. Maybe it’s not the Red Zone of Regulation and maybe it’s just a coping mechanism room for autistic children. If every child could use a virtual reality room where they can smash things then they could help get their anger out and have a better, safer place to cope, rather than physically destroying and lashing out in real-world situations.
It finally all came together. Everything. From valuing humans coming together, to my project coming together. I have always known I wanted to leave the world a better place and I began feeling very confident in this, but also within myself. I was initially nervous about completing my thesis project because I wanted to create something important, and figuring out this problem I have solved is giving me the confidence to keep going on my road to somewhere.
FINAL PROTOTYPE:
Room of Regulation: A Coping Mechanism for Autistic Children
Through a Virtual Experience
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