Family Approach VR

FAMILY APPROACH: THE METAVERSE TO LEARN HOW TO COMMUNICATE BAD NEWS IN REAL LIFE

Family Approach VR is a Virtual Reality training that we have developed for TPM-DTI Foundation as part of the training program offered to healthcare professionals around the world. In this post you can know the pedagogical details, get closer to the User Experience and the process of creating this training. We also talked about this project on our blog, focusing more on its uses and the shooting day.

WE FOCUS ON EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Interactive 360 ​​video use provides maximum realism and places the user as experience protagonist. The student is not a passive spectator but must make different decisions and can experience the different consequences of each one. The student learns through emotions, emotions that he will face precisely when faced with the real situation. In fact, users empathy with context roles is multiplied by two.

Learning with Virtual Reality implies having an experiential experience prior to reality that causes content retention to multiply up to x4 with this methodology.

AN EVEN MORE INTERACTIVE FORMAT

We have opted for an even more interactive format, designing new forms of interaction through voice and role-switching (the user will be an intensivist doctor in the experience first block, and then will become a transplant coordinator). Branchings complexes allow experience radical turns, according to the good or bad user decisions. In addition, we have introduced evaluation methods in various formats with which we already work regularly (multiple choice, self-evaluations, ordering phases of processes, etc.). This decision-making generates relevant and monitorizable information that is of great help to teachers and to teach students themselves to identify and understand the learning point in which they are.

USER JOURNEY 

The user is going to find a possible donor case who has just brain death died. His objective will be to give emotional support to the family and to achieve organ and tissue donation. Each of the decisions you make will affect the experience course. The student will have a virtual guide, which will guide them through the  experience different chapters. You will also come across multiple evaluative methods.

By putting on the virtual reality glasses, the user will meet a family that has just lost a loved one. What you must first do is notify the family member death. Each of the family members is specifically built to develop a specific and different psychological role, thus enhancing the situations range  and emotions that the user has to deal with. Before communicating this news, the user must design the space in which he wants to carry out the interview, taking into account what elements make a comfortable environment open to favorable communication. In addition, they must coordinate with the medical team and distribute the tasks that each one must carry out.

The user must also explain the brain death concept of  to the family, a concept that, due to its medical complexity, is often difficult to clearly convey to family members. Here it is also sought that the TPM knows how to adapt the tone and the medical jargon to a people group who do not have medical knowledge, since this is one of the main communication problems that professionals encounter in real life.

Third, the user must proceed to request organ and tissue donation from the deceased relative. At this point in the experience, the user already knows the psychological family profiles and their possible reactions, so they have enough information to develop a communication strategy for themselves.

If the user convinces the family members to donate, they must make one last effort by asking one of the family members to stay in the room to answer a survey that is mandatory by law in these procedures (Behavioral Risk Interview). It consists of questions that often enter the the deceased intimacy, so they require high empathy and understanding on medical professional part when formulating them, and when conducting the entire survey in general. Again, a challenge that puts into practice emotional skills to ensure effective communication even in the most delicate moments.

CO-CREATION DESIGN

At Immersium Studio we work in co-creation with our clients to maximize expertise. Each project is unique and requires all of our attention and dedication.

In the case of Family Approach VR, we have worked closely with the DTI team. After initial meetings in which we understood the DTI strategic needs and the specific objectives expected for this training, we undertook a very intense research phase in which we read a multiplicity of anonymized clinical cases and other documents that are the didactic material part of the courses in which this training is framed. We merged the most interesting elements of each case and fictionalized a case that gathered the best items to ensure the pedagogical objectives fulfillment, and that enhanced the different psychological profiles that the characters would play.

Throughout the entire design process, our UX experts thought and designed every detail of the experience to make it effective and impactful. After a first proposal, we continue doing rounds of dynamic feedback to finish outlining the characters, the plot, the interactions and the evaluation methodology. Once the script and branching scenarios were closed, we proceeded to record all the scenes, and our post-production magicians did their magic.

We are now in the coaching and follow-up phase and we are very happy to see more and more students learn with Family Approach VR.

THIS IS JUST ONE OF THE IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGIES APPLICATIONS IN TRAINING AND EDUCATION.

WE ARE EXPERTS IN TRAINING PEOPLE THROUGH UNFORGETTABLE EXPERIENCES WITH HIGH PEDAGOGICAL QUALITY.

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