For the creative portfolio module i saw an oppurtunity to create something that was more personal to me and the chance to create something abstract demonstrating my interpretation. I have had a speech impediment called a ‘Stutter’ or ‘Stammer’ since i was able to speak which not many people in the world are fully aware of, fully understand what is happening in our heads and why we sound like this which can lead to a misunderstanding and misinterpretation on how to talk to someone with a noticeable stutter.
My VR Experience Concept/Idea
I want to create my interpretaion of the mind of a stutter where a player can physically step inside the mind of someone with this speech impediment. This will allow the user to see how difficult it can be for us to process words in a ‘socially acceptable’ way and the amount of time in can take in different given situations or intense moments of communication.
The experience will take place inside the mind of a ‘stutterer’ in which they will see words floating around them and the objective of the experience is to attempt to grab these words to make a sentence that the mind is trying to say. A key part of this experience is going to be audio driven because i personally find that my mind will continually be repeating and fighting itself in an attempt to say a sentence which just isnt coming out and so i felt this would be an interesting way for others to experience this. So the idea would be that over time the user would hear the sentence they are trying to make on repeat which will start to get faster, overlap and start being more and more overwhelming as time has gone by without the sentence being completed.
Why Do I want to make this in Virtual Reality?
Virtual reality literally gives you the ability to embody a character or be apart of an environment and i think that this concept will be a great way for someone to step inside my interpretation of a ‘stutterer’s’ mind. The experience would allow the user to take on a physical challenge on themselves to create simple sentences while hearing the minds thoughts in the process. I hope that an experience of this calibur will give the user an insight or understanding of the speech impediment while of course not definitevely demonstrating a stutter due to this being my personal interpretation and experience.
Moodboard
Tutorial Feedback
In “INPUT DATE” session i discussed with my tutors the concept for the experience and how i could go about creating this in virtual reality. My initial thoughts simply involved the user attempting to create words physically to demonstrate how it can be difficult in the mind of a stutterer. I initially had the idea so that the player would either grab the different words in the environment or perhaps the player could look and gaze at the different words that are around them as a means of selection which would give the ability to a much more varied and spread out selection of words and phrases in the given environment. However my tutor very greatfully showed me a way in which this experience concept could be toned down to be achieveable in the given time available to create the project.
Next Steps
The next step after discussing with my tutors this initial idea is to start creating the experience in unity and further refining what i will need to create for the gameplay