PreviewLabs

Yale School of Medicine recently published an article that mentions two projects PreviewLabs worked on; Cutie and Year of the Cicadas. The piece highlights Kimberly Hieftje, PhD – who contracted us for both projects. The story is focused on how the loss of her son Cody influenced her career path, how she came to found the XR Peds lab at Yale, and eventually resulted in Year of the Cicadas.

The article tells the story of Kimberly Hieftje, PhD, and how she turned her grief into a game about loss and how to process this.

This article was written to shed light on the intersection of personal healing, storytelling, and technology. Year of the Cicadas is developed in collaboration with Yale School of Medicine’s XRPeds team, which is co-run by Dr. Kimberly Hieftje. PreviewLabs is responsible for the game’s development, building on our history of working with XRPeds on socially impactful projects such as Invite Only VR and InvestiDate. The project was also supported by a Unity for Humanity grant.

Key themes discussed in the article:

• Dr. Hieftje’s background leading up to her PhD in family grief and loss and how this evolved into her work at XR Peds
• A highlight of some of the work XR Peds is working on, including Cutie – which tackles hygiene in NICU environments.
• The inception of Year of the Cicadas, which took shape after returning to Dr. Hieftje’s son his grave during another Brood X Cicadas emergence, 17 years afer his passing.
• The process of telling the story of Year of the Cicadas through the collective storytelling of both Dr. Hieftje and her daughter, who wrote music for the game.

Need a Prototype For Your Research or Storytelling Project?

You can read the full article here. Interested in exploring how prototyping could support your own research or storytelling project? Reach out and find out how we can bring your vision to life.