Project Overview

Target user: International student in the UK, 25-30 years old who feel homesick while studying abroad
Requirement: Master degree course project
Context: Mental health
Timeline: 2 months (2025)
Tools: Unity, Meta Quest 2, Blender, VSCode, Mixamo, and Procreate

Home Far Away is a home environment in virtual reality (VR) where user can interact with relatives and pet to overcome with homesickness of international student with focus in the United Kingdom (UK).

This development focuses on providing home environment including interactions with specifically family and in the area of mental health in virtual reality (VR). It aims to help lessen homesickness while giving added therapy from getting motivation from family and other interactions (pet, food, etc). Some emotional supports are added with the family in terms of presence of physical interaction in VR (e.g. hugging and high five).

Inspiration or Problem Context

It came from personal experience and feel distress due to many factors such as separated from family, huge time differences from the United Kin (6-7 hours), and missing relatives. This then emerges as an idea that validated from researches taken from secondary data and interview as attached.

As for the inspiration, mostly the vibe and environment was advised to be inspired from The Sims, especially for the interactions and room setting.

Storyboard and VR Wireframe

Developed storyboard and workflow to analyze the detailed interactions and visualize the outline on how it will be shown in virtual reality.

1. Storyboard

Visualization of the interactions between user, characters, and elements in the experience in detail.

2. VR Wireframe

Developed VR wireframe to analyze the broader view of the overall experience in VR.

Elements Sketch and 3D Building

As for the elements needed for interactions, I did sketch for characters and mapping all interactions needed with them.

For the main characters and environment (such as mom, dad, and house building) I developed them in 3D.

As for the animations in each character, I used motion capture tool from school to animate mom and dad or interaction feedbacks, and used Mixamo for the rest.

Experience in action

Key takeaways

Did 2 technical testing to 3 users, one of them used treadmill HTC Vive and others only used the VR headset. Participants enjoyed the overall experience and give some notes on the proportion of the models seen in VR, even though it is not affect the overall experience directly. Participants agree that the VR app might help students with homesickness.

Skills gained

Building Home Far Away project was my first project using virtual reality. It was a very challenging project, I learned how to enrich the experience not only through interactions, but also other aspects such as sounds

Need to improve

1. Limitation

   1. Cannot explore other type of Batik pattern

   2. Transition between scenes are not smooth

   3. Some interactions applied differently from brainstorming in terms of visual quality

2. Future recommendations

   1. Showing storytelling broader meaning part of Mega Mendung Batik, such as the leader protection

   2. Can see other Batik pattern meaning (showing options)

   3. Can be elaborated for museum experience and go broader age range participant such as kids (due to its fun interactions)

   
   

References

• English, T., Davis, J., Wei, M., and Gross, J.J. 2017. Homesickness and Adjustment Across the First Year of College: A Longitudinal Study. National Library of Medicine. [Online]. 17(1), pp.1-5. [Accessed 11 November 2024]. Available from: 10.1037/emo0000235

• Xuan, L. 2022. How to Survive Homesickness as an International Student. 26 June. [Online]. [Accessed 20 October 2024]. Available from: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/studentsatlse/2022/06/26/how-to-survive-homesickness-as-an-international-student/

• Kelly, R.M., Cheng, Y., McKay D., Wadley G., and Buchanan G. 2021. “It’s About Missing Much More Than the People”: How Students use Digital Technologies to Alleviate Homesickness. CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. [Online]. 21(226), pp.1- 17. [Accessed 10 November 2024]. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445362

• Алёна Сайдяшева. 2024. Simple The Sims floor plan. [Online]. [Accessed 22 November 2024]. Available from: https://id.pinterest.com/pin/5629568278350135/

• Sims4. 2017. SIMcredible Designs: Keep Life Simple kitchen. [Online]. [Accessed 15 November 2024]. Available from: https://id.pinterest.com/pin/563864815850591286/

• Sixam. 2022. Living Room for a Cozy Family (CC Pack for The Sims 4) by SIXAMcc x OshinSims. [Online]. [Accessed 15 November 2024]. Available from: https://sixam.cc/living-room-for-a-cozy-family-cc-pack-for-the-sims-4-by-sixamcc-x-oshinsims/