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Engage-Me-Now: A Thesis on Relaxation

For my thesis project, I’ve decided to create an interactive video relaxation program targeting people with mental, physical, visual, auditory, and sensory disabilities. However, everyone will be able to use it as well. The name of this project so far is called Engage-Me-Now, as seen in the title, to promote engagement for everyone. Using sensory-friendly visuals and audio, it would be an entertaining form of interactive media that engages and relaxes its users. Now, there are apps specifically for this, using meditation and tracking behaviors, but I wanted to do something else that everyone can do and enjoy doing, looking forward to relaxing and playing it. That is what would be a huge strength of this project, since it’s something that hasn’t really been done before.

I came up with the idea based on my childhood, as a person with learning disabilities that stem ADHD and Auditory Processing Delay, and my time in occupational therapy. I played a game called Interactive Metronome that consists of clapping your hands together every time you hear a “ding”, like a metronome, for a certain amount of reps. However, the program has evolved much more since I last used it, so I would often get bored with it due to the lack of actual entertaining engagement, which I know they have more of now. In a way, this program helped me relax over time and significantly increased my focus, memory, and cognition. Although I’m not exactly striving for a program just like this, I do need to give credit where credit is due, and I would’ve never thought of this thesis idea in the first place without my experiences with Interactive Metronome.

For my thesis, I would likely use Adobe After Effects for the visuals, Adobe Premiere to tie the program together, possibly some programming, and Adobe Audition for the audio. I would also be researching different examples of sensory-friendly interactive media, such as museum exhibitions, projects, videos, and games, which I have already started. I think a weakness in my project would be that I don’t really know much about programming, so that could impact the amount of which I want to accomplish. Also, everyone has different needs and sensory triggers, so it might be very hard to actually get something to work in the way that it won’t upset anyone.

I don’t have rough sketches just yet, and I’ve summarized the notes of my early findings throughout this post (very sporadically). However, I am updating my thesis slide deck as I do more research. I will be contacting my old speech pathologist, who worked with me since I was a toddler, and also get into contact with other people with disabilities on campus to learn more and create better prototypes. I also don’t really have any other ideas, at this point it would just be minimizing the amount of work I actually can do in this project.

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Ideas and Life Assessment

So, I think I’m supposed to post this here. I didn’t have any other prompts to post this assignment anywhere else, so I guess I’m good. Anyway, for this post, I have decided to watch Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. Although I knew about his life story, I didn’t realize how him dropping out of college had such an impact on the entire world based on the little things he did. He mentions that he took a calligraphy class, which enlightened his fascination with fonts, allowing him to create an extensive typography of fonts for his first edition of the Mac. By connecting the dots, he realized 10 years down the line when he was creating the computer about how much the class had taught him, which in turn let him distinguish his innovations from others.

This made me realize that I too, have connected the dots to get to where I am now with my thesis idea. Over the years, I did countless hours of speech and occupational therapy, as a person with ADHD and Auditory Processing Delay, mostly involving a game called Interactive Metronome, which uses a bell sound and the clapping of hands together to press a button on the beat. At first, there were times where I was bored of this and didn’t want to do it since it was repetitive. However, over the course of several testings, I learned that it actually helped my cognition, attention span, and processing skills all this time. This made me realize that I wanted to do something that also helps people, including those with mental, visual, auditory, and physical disabilities, yet is also fun and interactive in the form of a video or visual program (I don’t do well with code, though).

As far as the life assessment goes, I relate to what Jobs said about loving what you do to understand how you can live life to the fullest. I recently had an internship where I created videos for an insurance company, and I actually really enjoyed editing them. So much so that I feel it could be something I want to do post-college even. I also love playing video games, such as Jobs loved tinkering with code and microprocessors, so of course, I play them, and analyze them. From what started as a simple hobby that I never grew out of, changed into something that I am heavily considering as a career.