PreviewLabs

Over the course of the past two years, we’ve worked for various university related prototypes.

Just like game developers, researchers also find it important to keep their projects quiet until they decide to make any announcements or publications. Recently, three University related projects were announced, so we’re happy that we can give a quick peek:

1. MoMba – Yale University

MoMba is a research prototype, designed to investigate how a social network app with gamification features can help connecting mothers in the city of New Haven. The ultimate goal of this project is to “combat depression among first-time, low-income mothers“, as the initial announcement of the MoMba project explained.

More recently, a whole new page was dedicated to this Yale University flagship project, including a video, screenshots, vision statement, and user guide for the prototype.

Yale Child Study Center and the Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine

We developed this prototype for Yale School of Medicine, more precisely for the Yale Child Study Center, and the Department of Psychiatry.

2. The Rise of Placenta Accreta – Stanford University

The Rise of Placenta Accreta is an interactive video, used to enhance one of the articles in the Fall 2013 edition of the Stanford Medicine Magazine.

The article itself informs the readers about a condition called Placenta Accreta. The interactive video explains this condition in detail, as well as the normal function of the placenta.

We created this prototype for our client David Sarno of Lighthaus Inc., who lead the creation of the finished product, resulting in this interactive video, made in Unity3D. In the prototyping process, we experimented with different ways of conveying the message, and different levels of interaction.

3. Study of Anxiety Disorders – Yale University

In an other project for Yale University, we developed a research prototype called YIKES.
YIKES stands for Yale Interactive Kinect Environment Software.

Mentioned on our projects page, this is a motion controlled game prototype developed for Drs. Eli R. Lebowitz and Frederick Shic at the Yale Child Study Center for the Microsoft Kinect, generating output data suitable for statistical analysis. Further details about the prototype cannot be disclosed at this point.

Eli R. Lebowitz, clinical psychologist and cognitive scientists at Yale recently won a NARSAD grant.

A NARSAD Grant is one of the highest distinctions in the field of mental health research that support a broad range of the best ideas in brain research.

Eli R. Lebowitz, Ph.D., Yale University, will study avoidance behavior in anxiety disorders. Youths aged eight to 16 diagnosed with clinical anxiety will take part in a clinical trial using an innovative motion-tracking technology, the Yale Interactive Kinect Environment Software, to quantifiably measure avoidance, to relate it to self-report of anxiety and explore other questions such as to what extent anxiety is specific to a given trigger.

Congratulations for the achievement in your career, Eli and Frederic!