The final Tea Haven workshop was a success! There was a large turnout and every student that signed up for the VR experience had a chance to put on the headsets and see our work. The workshop provided two varieties of iced tea, ambient live music from a steel tongue drum, air drying clay for students to get their hands on, and of course our VR meditation experience.
As with every event, there were problems that needed to be solved before the workshop. The team discovered that the Oculus Quests did not work outside in direct sunlight. The solution was taking the VR experience indoors to a private room not too far from the event. Because of this, the lead took charge and became the point person to lead groups of 3 people at a time and prepare them for what they were going to experience in the headsets.
Three individuals were each placed in charge of a headset and were on standby to help students with troubleshooting such as fitting into headsets or changing from the meditation portion to the interactive music portion. Each group was given roughly 10 minutes in the headset to fully experience both sections of our project. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive as the opportunity to assess and ask questions to the participants while escorting them back to their seats at the workshop was also taken. People had lots of great things to say not only about the voice recording but also the beautiful scenery and art direction of the interactive portion featuring mushrooms imitating the steel tongue drum.
Understandably the AR side project didn’t receive many eyeballs during the event as the main focus was the VR project in the headsets. However, this did not prove to be an issue as the AR project was created for Tea Haven to use as an informational product they can provide to students at their workshops who are interested in learning more about tea. The process of it being grown all the way to ending up in your cup, the benefits of Coffee vs Tea, and a step by step guide on how to prepare the perfect cup of black tea, all within a fun virtual immersive experience.
Overall this was a very fulfilling project to take part in and effort towards an organization on campus that aligns with interests of mental health was contributed. Thank you Tea Haven, Music Therapy, and everyone in the group for pushing until the very end to get the results that are proud to be shared
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