Helen Chen
DESIGN
MeTrA
WEB ART Slowing Down to Grow
Living History
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Undergraduate research project looking into AR as a tool for spatial reasoning in the medical field.
Medical Training Assets (MeTrA) was an ongoing research team based out of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Synaesthetic Media Lab. The project, which at the time of my involvement was led by Dr. Gabby Resch, was exploring the use of extended reality (XR) tools to support medical training. It was also a part of broader research within the lab, which looks into how XR can affect penetrative reasoning, which is the ability to reason about the interior of an object based on its surface.
Our team identified several core functions the app would require to interact with medical models:
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The ability to select and manipulate individual elements of the model
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The ability to hide individual elements of the model
- The ability to see inside of elements of the model
Due to the uncertain spatial contexts of augmented reality, we added coloration to components when they were selected to help users see when an item was individually selected.
Within a team of 4, I was the UI/UX Researcher and Project Coordinator, working primarily with the Unreal Engine interaction developers.