With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as with many other sectors of life, therapy sessions had been moved from their standard in person meetings to video calls. However, it was proven difficult to provide patients with bilateral stimulation therapy due to most treatment methods being best performed in an in-person session. Therapists have found websites to provide their patients with a light bar and traveling sound, but since the program was not designed to work with so many people, it was buggy. The struggle placed on EMDR therapists has driven our team to design a physical device that allows patients and therapists to continue their practice from the comfort of their home. 

Our research findings reflected the lack of development in remote EMDR therapy, but introduced our team  to the basics of bilateral stimulation. Bilateral stimulation devices can include buzzers, headphones, and lightbars that are made in a way that allows a therapist to control the speed, intensity, and the color of lights. Further, for our project we had to take into consideration the ability for our devices to be controlled from different locations.

For our project, we have developed a take-home device with three sensory methods provided. All stimulants are designed with circuitry to connect to an app programmed by our team. This app is in the therapists hands so they can have control over the timing of a patient’s stimuli. Our project is a step forward in making EMDR therapy more readily available for sensitive groups.

In the end, we did not quite reach everyone of our goals, such as the cost, we wanted to make sure it was under $100, but we still kept in mind to be cost effective and ended up making a project that has not been made. We also made a product that would compete with our already made devices. Yet, every other requirement we set for ourselves was met.

To start out and make sure it met the requirements, by testing it on ourselves and using what we understood of bilateral stimulation to match all the pieces. In the future, we would like to ask more therapists what they think and what we need to change and fix, from there we would ask people who have experienced bilateral stimulation and what feels off about it. With this information we would get enough information to make updates, to the software and hardware. Once we feel like we have fixed any problems the plan would be to get therapist and clients who are willing to test out this device and get more feedback to make final iterations. Overall this would involve having advice and feedback from 2 different groups and making sure the adjustments for pretty well for all users, however we know that as humans we are different.

Working in a group will never be prefect, since we all came from different background and have different personalities. You should be clear in your ideas, this helps the rest of your group understand what you are thinking and makes sure that your idea is throughout, you can so this by drawing it out on or finding pictures and/or links that are similar to what you mean. To continue with this you should also listen to your teammates and ask or let them know you are confused on what they are thinking. This will help sort out ideas faster and make sure that they know that are part of the group and their ideas are valued. 

Understand that we all have different set of skill and they should all be used, although it is amazing to so see a project coming together and wanting to learn a new skill at time you have to know when it is best to set back and let a more experienced teammate handle it especially when you are on a time crunch, such as this project. You can still learn a new skill by asking your teammate to walk you though it and over looking any schematics or drawings. You will also learn knew skills when you are working on a project outside of your comfort zone, sometimes you are the teammate who knows the least about how, or what to do to help out, and that is okay as long as you are willing to work and adapt. 

This may like something everyone knows but I feel as we do not use it as often or maybe hesitant to use it, ask help sooner then later. There is nothing wrong with trying and trying and failing but it can get very frustrating and that helps no one. So ask more experienced people, this can also mean finding new people and reaching out, this can give you new ideas and improvements. 

Things will change throughout the project, such as timelines we had set dates for specific parts to be done and they were not always done on time. Or the plan just changed because we realized certain parts would not work for our end goal, so even though we thought it was done, in testing we realized that it was not how we wanted it to preform.