Projects

Augment Reality to Identify Cognitive Distortion: Cognitive Distortions, which are unrealistic self-criticisms and negative assumptions, are the root of many mental disorders. Identifying these distortions is crucial for treating issues like anxiety, depression, and stress. We developed ARCoD, a smartphone game using Augmented Reality (AR) to identify five distinct Cognitive Distortions. Our findings show that the game's assessments are very similar to those from the Cognitive Distortion Scale (CDS). We also created a 3D version of the game and are currently studying how different environments affect the gameplay experience. 

FyF

Fight Your Fear: FyF is a gamified digital interface to aid the health care providers in building a custom Digital Exposure Therapy to treat the OCD accessible remotely by both patients and healthcare providers. FyF consists of two major segments: 1) End user interface (the game playable in both Virtual Reality (VR) headsets and handheld devices such as smartphones) and 2) the webtool for healthcare provider to build custom gamified treatment plan. Working in collaboration with the professionals from the Psychology Department of Idaho State University.

DET - Digital Exposure Therapy 

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is identified as one of the mental health disorders deteriorated during the Covid-19 pandemic. In spite of the existence of effective psychotherapeutic strategies, a significant percentage of individ-uals do not get access to mental healthcare facilities due to the increase in the number of patients. In this project, we have proposed a gamified digital interface to aid the health care providers in building a custom Digital Exposure Therapy to treat the OCD accessible remotely by both patients and the healthcare providers via handheld devices. 

Lit-VR 

This project creates an interactive VR representation of Renaissance London in order to educate students on the geography and politics of the time. This is a collaborative project with Professor Dr. Curtis Whitaker from the English Department of Idaho State University.

MoMVR 

Stress is identified as one of the key factors of medical disorders such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal issues and various mental health disorders such as PTSD, OCD, anxiety, and depression. Maintaining stress level can reduce chances for fatal disease mentioned above. This project aims to provide a gamified digital platform to control the stress level by enforcing gameplay action via the player’s heart rate. We have developed a version of the famous Flappy Bird game, where the players can achieve their goal with a certain heart rate level. The principal concept was to design each level of the game to create a special circumstance where players are introduced to constraints gradually during gameplay. The experimental outcome showed that reducing game constraints when a player feels stress/anxiety can improve play performance.

Music in Games 

It is widely accepted that music has the power to impact people's minds. Among different components, background music has been used in games since the earliest years of their existence. This project aims to investigate the impact of different in-game background music on the gameplay experience for 2D games playable on smartphones. We collaborated with the Music department of ISU to write three original music of different genres. The experimental outcome demonstrated that these tunes have a distinctive impact on an individual’s gameplay experience. 

Text Instruction in Games 

Video games include various tutorials or text-based instructions to guide players. In commercial games, players might skip these instructions, but in serious games, it is crucial that they read and follow them to achieve the desired outcomes. This project examined different text-based instruction formats in a 2D game by creating three versions with varying layouts. Our experiment showed that simpler layouts with text-based instructions lead to better player performance and a more enjoyable gameplay experience. 

MoM