First Resort: Cognitive Reframing in VR

First Resort is a VR mental wellness app I worked on at RealizedCare (formerly BehaVR). One of the app's main functions is to teach users how to practice cognitive reframing—a key tool of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which involves challenging and restructuring distorted thoughts. I was the primary designer assigned to this part of the product, responsible for concept development, storyboarding, prototyping, whiteboxing, interaction design, level design, gameplay design, and sound design. I wrote the dialogue for the tutorials. I was also one of the main artists who worked on this, responsible for modeling, texturing, animation, VFX (shaders and particles), lighting, and graphics optimization.

First Resort is available for free in an Early Access period on App Lab, and was selected as a finalist in the "Best Health Game" category by Games For Change 2023. The target platform for First Resort was Meta Quest and Meta Quest 2. All art assets featured are low-poly and optimized to run on a VR headset.

https://www.meta.com/experiences/5600346073390436/

An activity where users acknowledge the feelings and behaviors that come up in response to their thoughts, and practice labeling their thoughts as "distortions". I designed this activity, and created the props and animation.

Animations portraying different types of distorted thinking traps. I modeled and textured the miniature environments and animated the character.

An activity where users challenge the accuracy of their thoughts by gathering evidence for and against them. I designed this activity, created the candlestick, VFX, UI, and several environmental assets.

An activity where users identify their core beliefs, and examine if those beliefs are preventing them from achieving their goals. I designed this activity, created art for the interactive map, created the VFX (particles), and did the lighting.

Interaction design shaders that I created using Unity Shadergraph: a hologram for placing objects, an outline shader for grabbing objects, and a glowing fresnel shader for highlighting objects