Second life

We needed furniture, I was thinking "chairs" we had a reception desk outside, but I couldn't make a chair, I never got the hang of it, my chairs were pathetic lumps of wood. I decided to go on an adventure to see if I could find any...

(Needed a new outfit!)

(In the "sex" gazebo)

(Gazebo I got but it turns out to be a "sex palour" type thing with different sexual positions scripted into it for when you make your avatar sit down, people really have some time on their hands! we are a sexual health clinic but don't think this is really appropriate! so we either have to re-script it or replace it!)

(Dancing!)

I like this tree, I was thinking we should have trees like this in our place!

Second Life 3k sexual health centre!

On Thursday I came back into college for the day to work on our 3d environment as I had been ill for the beginning of the week and the week before so wanted to do some catching up! 

I noticed we now had a new building, which compromised of 4 walls and a door! The first thing I decided to do was add a door sign of our logo (as you can see in picture) and then I decided to give us a wooden floor!

(wearing "3K" logo on clothes!)

(wooden floor I put down)

I then decided to experiment a little and make use of the water outside as I wanted to have an "underground" kinda "secret area so I made a ramp down to the outside of the building into the water ending with a serene moat type thing, (I forget what they're called?)

(my ramp)

(sat on the pier)

You can see in the last pic that there is a bright neon multi-colored tunnel there now which I added next and changed several times, then adding a gazebo then removing it! 

(above view of the "tunnel")

Second life survey

This is the survey questionaire we developed and put into practice as part of our market research.

Second Life group project

We have had some fantastic ideas for second life, starting as a house in which each room focussed on a different aspect from the government initiative, ie: sexual health, healthy eating, environment etc. but then we were told to focus on one aspect as this would be too much and that quality is better than quantity! 

we then decided to stick with general health and create a virtual doctors surgery that people can visit and obtain information and guidance on a range of health issues, although my gut feeling was always that it would be more appropriate for teens who may have sensitive issues that they are nervous about discussing with a GP face to face.

Our next move was to do some market research, this resulted in devising questionaires that we then planned to take to the leeds student health practice down the road in order to question patients to find out if they would use a 2nd life doctors and why, and also to get their thoughts on the service and why it might be useful!

However after asking the receptionist for permission we were told that we couldn't conduct the survey there, so we had to come back to college and question the students here, we also made sure to question staff so as to get a more balanced result.

After reading through the answers together we came to the conclusion that the service would definitely be more appropriate for sexual health issues concerning younger users who may find it difficult to express their concerns with a person face to face.

The contraceptive pill is now available for girls aged 11 up WITHOUT their parents consent, this is to try and combat the rising number of teenage pregnancies in the UK, however it is also rather alarming in that children as young as 11 are having SEX! we feel that at such a young age they are very likely to be misinformed, what parent is going to talk to their 9,10 or 11 year old about sex? sex education in schools is currently done in stages, between the ages of 11-14 pupils are taught about the menstrual cycle and how it relates to human reproduction, physical and emotional changes brought on by puberty, how the fusion of a male and female cell causes fertilization and how a foetus develops in the uterus, they are not taught about sexual intercourse, and more importantly STDs until they are 14-16 and even then the focus is more on hormones and fertility with STDs sessions being limited to one day or one week workshops!

so as you can see information is limited and very mediocre at that.

going to a sexual health clinic for information will most certainly be very daunting for a young teen/child who has symptoms for an STD, just think this could be any number of things which I won't go into but I imagine they would be extremely frightening for anyone, especially when doubled with the mentality of an 11 or 12 year old, that could be a very life-changing and scarey prospect, not to mention the emotional distress that comes with first time sex.

Our virtual clinic, (which we are now thinking of making into a "ride on" experience) will be light-hearted and informative, we don't want to scare clients to death but they need to know the facts, what to look out for, symptoms, information on how "Exactly" STDs are transmitted, this may seem obvious but of course someone as young as 11 may not know this, and of course we all know how "kidz" like to make up stories! 

here are some posters I designed for the surgery but will probably not be used now that we are focussing on STDS! 

2nd life

how cool?!!!

OOh look an ambulance! but where are the patients? awww, i wanna see blood and gore! hehe think I play too many games, but  Ican't help but look at 2nd life as a game!

These empty beds would look better if they had dying virtual patients on them....

Posters....

We got together in our group today to discuss our project and come up with some ideas, the first thing we thought of was to design a house that people can visit in 2nd life and it would have interactive rooms each focussing on a different area of personal health, ie: Kitchen for healthy eating, bedroom for sexual health, bathroom for personal hygiene etc. but after discussing this with anna we discovered that we should only focus on one area as there will be alot to do, research, modelling, moodboards, planning, themes, slogans, logos, posters to design, textures etc. so we have decided to focus on one area.

Then we looked at doctors surgeries, dentists and the NHS and decided it would be good if we had a 2nd life doctors surgery in which maybe young people come come for information and guidance on a range of health issues. This would be mostly beneficial to those that may be worried about speaking face to face with a GP about embarrassing matters, or even for those who don't have the time to go to the doctors or can't get an appointment in time, rather than looking through pages and pages of text for information users can visit our virtual surgery where they can ask questions directly and get answers from one of our virtual doctors or nurses. This could be done by either pre-programming set questions and answers or by having live health officials actually working there and giving live responses.

I think that sexual health would be something that users would want to enquire about the most, simply because it is the most awkward subject for them to talk about and this way may be easier for them, anyone from the age of 15 upwards can come here for information, or maybe younger? but that is where market research comes in, we plan on making questionaires to give out to students and young people, or to have them answer the questions on the spot, to find out if they would use the service and what they might use it for, or what they think the majority of young people would want it for.

We need to carry out this research to assertain how this service would be beneficial to users and if the users themselves feel it would be a useful service?

typing NHS into 2nd life we found that there was already a london based NHS service, which surprised me as I didn't think there would be anything like that on 2nd life! after looking around we saw that some of the ideas we had, ie: having posters and webpage links were already in place, but what it was lacking was interest, interactivity, fun! yes we need to make it fun or people will not want to go there as it will just be another 3d world, we felt that nurses should have been walking around for you to maybe interact with, it would have been fun to see patients being rushed in on trolleys, (as we were in an A&E section) the whole place seemed a bit dead and boring, it was cool that they had coffee machines etc, but I kinda felt, why walk all over the place for information? surely it would be easier and more accesible on google? 

so we will have to make sure our virtual world has character, vibrance and holds visitors interests whilst giving them useful information at the same time! so maybe we could make a game out of it? 

we have all decided to do individual research over the weekend and then bring it all in on monday so we can develop it further as a group. 

I will be designing questionaires in the hope to find out the main reasons young people visit the GP, and what issues they may find easier talking about virtually, and if they find this idea appealing or not. 

The 3 of us in our group on our empty land! this will soon hold a masterpiece of design!