Escaping from the most stressed-out city
It motivated me to build MentalBooth, a mobile station that aims to alleviate stress by utilizing Virtual Reality-guided meditation. MentalBooth was later adopted by a shopping mall, a co-working space, and my university in Hong Kong.
Duration
0.5 years
Team
Hollie Chan
Winnie Chung
Perry Chan
Ivan Yeung
Rachel Wong
Ayumi Lee
Tools
Contextual Inquiry
Intercept Interviews
Rapid Prototyping
Business Model
Platform
VR
Physical
Impact
500+ relieved users
Enactus World Cup Hong Kong Champion
Overview
Gathering contextual insights through intercept interviews on campus
I wanted to understand the obstacles to stress management, and how our design could pave the way to a stress-free city. My team started to interview students from my university to learn how they usually deal with stress.
Students lack a quiet place to relax
Students actually had a hard time in order to destress. We consolidated our findings from the interviews with an affinity map to accurately identify what their problems are during the process of stress relieving. Among the identified factors, the inadequacy of relaxation spaces emerged as the most significant concern. This was consistently highlighted by the majority of interviewees, affecting students across various stress levels.
We then built MentalBooth because mental health can't wait.
We built the first MentalBooth through rapid prototyping to develop empathy and receive authentic feedback. This approach helped us experiment with our concept under limited manpower and resources.
Using readily available materials from IKEA, our first prototype was an enclosed fabric space playing VR sceneries and a beginner meditation guide. It was placed at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and coworking space.
User testing captures participants' experiences with VR footage from ECOVR and a meditation guide developed with the HKUST Counselling Center.
Addressing physical effects of stress on the body
Users told us even they loved the first prototype, the limited moving area was stressful.While the natural sceneries effectively guided concentration, they occasionally led to eye strain. We learned that aside from the VR meditation feature, we need to take the ergonomics of relaxation into account.
Through iterative design, we created a more spacious MentalBooth, incorporating guided eye-closing moments to provide users with breaks between visual stimuli. To further test these improvements, we partnered with a wellness-focused shopping mall in Hong Kong, facilitating another round of user testing.
Building MentalBooth in a shopping mall's underground parking
Interested passersby learning about MentalBooth in the mall