Role: Senior Developer
Client: Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Team: Potion Design
Technology: Cinder, C++, OpenGL, GLSL, Node.js, Python, SQLite, WebSockets, LED, NFC, DMX Lighting, Bash Scripts, LaunchDaemons, Multi-Touch, Mesh Networks, Multi-Platform, BeagleBone Black, Embedded Linux

Overview

Forest Friends is a multi-location interactive environment that provides positive distraction for pediatric oncology patients.

Goal

Create an interactive experience that provides positive distraction for patients through various phases of their treatment.

Challenges

• Positively distract pediatric oncology patients while providing continuity through their treatment journey
• Enable hospital staff to easily maintain the installation without additional burden
• Create an experience that compliments each treatment phase

Role and Team

My responsibilities included developing the core interaction and animation systems for 3, 2D animal companions (rabbit, frog, duck) via animation and finite state machines. Each animal exhibited up to 13 unique behaviors in different situations and locations, as well as had some level of autonomy. I also built a Node.js service to create a mesh network between installations in multiple locations.

The Potion Design team consisted of 4 developers, 1 designer and 1 producer in close collaboration with a number of stakeholders and vendors.

Final Product

The experience is spread across the oncology floor and consist of 4 main areas/interactives:

Waiting Room

Patients begin their journey in the waiting room. They choose a virtual Forest Friend (rabbit, frog, duck) in the form of a bracelet with an embedded NFC chip. They can then scan their bracelet in each of the spaces and interact with their chosen companion. The experience consists of a 6-screen multitouch wall where patients can explore a dynamic, evolving, forest environment. They can play with their forest friend, interact with other patients’ forest friends and discover hidden interactions in the forest environment. Focused sound domes provide an ambient soundscape with soothing audio and interactive feedback for patients.

Exam Rooms

Each of the 3 exam rooms contain a multitouch kiosk in vertical orientation. The patients can use their NFC bracelet to bring up their forest friend and play a game of hide-and-seek. The installation also consists of soothing ambient LED lighting that complements the background on the screen. Once the examination commences, the interactive can be ‘muted’ which changes it to a calm environment and a soothing ambient light.

Induction

This room is where patients are sedated prior to their treatment. The interactive in this room consists of a projection in a dark room that plays an animation of the patient’s forest friend settling down for a nap. This provides a soothing and calming experience.

The Bell

In keeping with tradition, patients ring a bell to celebrate the end of their treatment. The bell is augmented with an ‘invisible’ piezo sensor and ARM-based microcontroller. When patients ring the bell, it sends UDP messages to all interactives on the network that set off a multitude of celebratory animations and sounds on each interactive.

Results

• The end result was well received by pediatric oncology staff at Wexner Medical Center and became integral to their activities.
• I authored, co-authored and contributed to three open source libraries over the course of the project that were adopted and used on a number of other interactive installation projects – a spritesheet block for Cinder, a basic sound management block for Cinder and a 2D scene graph block for Cinder.
• I learned a lot about animation state machines and finite state machines, I was able to utilize, apply and refine these learnings on numerous projects thereafter.
• Forest Friends won the Communication Arts, Award of Excellence.