G08

Meet the Team

Meera Nanda

CM'20

mn584@cornell.edu

Zhiling Hu

CM'20

zh347@cornell.edu

Prithvi Sriram

CS'20

ps976@cornell.edu

glossophobia

Glossophobia is the fear of public speaking. It is thought to affect approximately 75% of the world's population to some degree. One of the most common causes of this phobia presenting itself in an individual is bad prior experiences, and one of the most effective forms of treatment is exposure therapy.


our project

The goal of our project is to offer a form of exposure therapy to users who have Glossophobia. We have used various VR tools within Unity to help our users grow their confidence when speaking on stage and slowly help them overcome their fears. The participant is exposed to an auditorium where they have control over different parameters of the environment, such as the audience size, script difficulty, audience reactions, and timers. They also have access to exercises to help calm their nerves.

G08_Glossophobia.mp4

features

START MENU

The user begins their experience with a Start Menu, where they opt to change the settings. We've intentionally kept this menu translucent so that wherever possible, the user can see the changes taking place within the environment. Once they customize the settings, they can click on Ready to Play to begin the experience.

CUSTOMIZE ENVIRONMENT

Using this screen, the user can control the following settings:

  • Increase or decrease audience size from empty, low occupancy, medium occupancy, to full.
  • Turn the timer on or off.
  • Turn the audience reactions on or off.
  • Change the difficulty level of the practice script.

SPEECH PRACTICE

Once the user starts the game, they can begin clicking through lines of the script as they practice. If enabled, the timer begins running and the audience reactions begin to randomly appear. As we can see from the image (right side) the reactions come up as emojis next to the audience member. The microphone on the podium can also be picked up if the user wants a more authentic experience.

SELF-EVALUATION

Once the user reaches the end of the script, they are prompted to evaluate how they performed this practice round from a scale of 1-5. This way they are able to track their progress as they continue practicing.

PRACTICE HISTORY

With this table, the user can see the details of every practice round they have done, including all of the customizations implemented for each round. This will help with isolating which triggers have the most impact on their performance.

ANXIETY REDUCTION EXERCISES

Finally, we've implemented an aspect of EMDR therapy to help the user with any anxiety they may have around public speaking. This form of therapy involves rhythmic right-left haptic feedback as the user focuses their thoughts on things that could help them reduce anxiety in relation to certain situations. The haptic feedback was done using the Oculus controllers, which can't be seen very clearly in the video but if you look closely you might see the hands vibrating slightly. We began this exercise with a few rounds of deep breathing to help the user clear their head to focus on the situation at hand.