Plumped Down in a Pod, Prepare to Plug In to Unplug
Traditional mindfulness delivered by a not-so-traditional medium
I walked up to the purple egg chair and sat down. The engineer tells me to take off my glasses, replacing them with VR goggles. I choose my settings and then am prompted to notice my breathing. Sounds relaxing, right? That is how I eased into my first go-round with using virtual reality for mediation purposes. The question is, will the ritual of getting connected to these devices liberate me and encourage me to relax?
Using a pop-up retail store to debut the Cigna Virtual Relaxation Pod, Cigna, a global provider of health services, partnered with STORY, a retail concept store that frequently changes products like an art gallery. The featured product, the Virtual Relaxation Pod, is an immersive two-minute experience that employs guided meditation. The experience, which features the voice of expert meditation facilitators, is intended to promote mindfulness and help lower the cost of stress-related illnesses which apparently are estimated to cost the U.S. economy over $300 billion each year.
While seated in a comfortable pod chair and wearing an Oculus Rift headset, I was transported to one of three calming simulated environments. My options: a Zen garden, a tropical beach or a woodland campsite. I chose the forest scene. (Among friends, I’m usually the person who opts to go camping.) An audio meditation accompanies these 3D environments, as high-quality headphones pipe in relaxing tones, and true to its design, the device (and the pod chair) began to prime my senses for stress reduction.
During the experience, I was able to look in any direction and see different elements of the 3D environment; it was packed with cool features such as dynamic, animated skies, changing lighting conditions, flowing water and waves, and animated wind and foliage. A campfire in front of me, a lantern emitting light, a beautiful crescent moon overhead. The guided meditation started and I sunk into the space chair with calmness and a wild sense of awe for the simulated serenity I was experiencing. The best description of the visuals is like sitting in a video game, one slightly cartoonish but also stylized and real enough to be believed and to find one lost within.
The software uses a Unity game engine to run, Alienware computer to process the immense amounts of data, a Microsoft Surface tablet, and an Oculus headset.
Rachel Stein, a Cigna Solutions Architect explains:
“This is the first project to hit the market. There are a whole slew of applications; we started a lot with pain management. But, we want to focus on stress initially. The Cigna Virtual Relaxation Pod takes expert-led meditation and pairs it with VR to enhance traditional mindfulness techniques. Moving forward, we want to use biometric data and feedback to guide the [user’s’] experience, which can allow our platform to dynamically change the environments based on the outputs to optimize your level of meditation. We are looking to develop customized software. These products are Cigna owned, Cigna built.”
The debut of the Cigna Virtual Relaxation Pod at STORY is the first in the United States with the intent to go global. Future plans include using biofeedback to measure the therapy’s efficacy and to teach users to relax more effectively.
The novelty of this VR experience is rooted in the software, which is both notable and impressive. From a technology standpoint, it is great to see a company adopt the technologies in the marketplace and make some bold moves in the health space. This strategic choice is made possible by the existing ecosystem created by the many VR platforms available.
Cigna and its partners are doing all the right things to stay competitive. Apart from the VR headset, the main point of differentiation for the experience is the chosen application and the health-related use case, with its highly tailored purpose in relaxation technology. For Cigna, the peace of mind that comes with this new experience is the ability for Cigna to deploy this software at scale. Imagine if one of these programs is sold to all the clinics helping veterans address PTSD, or, if it allowed refugees to use this to be temporarily immersed in a relaxing environment to avoid the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
As found in the Virtual Reality Debrief, PSFK Labs’ research indicates that VR will continue to motivate people to succeed, feel better, or overcome mental roadblocks by playing an important role in the future of health and fitness. VR technology can help patients overcome phobias such as fear of flying, heights, public speaking, claustrophobia, social phobia, and, panic disorder, to name a few.
This type of therapy is known as exposure therapy and helps sufferers ease into phobic situations by exposing them to their phobia. In recent years the price of VR technology has plummeted; making it financially viable for makers to produce and for patients to experience regularly. This low cost is why it can affordably be tested and adopted by health companies. Cigna knows that the possibilities are endless, exploring and reaching new strategies that can bring their products and services to market is what drove this initiative. Eric Herbek, VP of Product for Retail Solutions at Cigna, says:
“The world is moving more toward the consumer, toward the retail experience, so we’ve been trying to understand the things that consumers really need and a lot of our insights have led us to they are very hungry for information about what to eat, how to sleep, how to plan for their health and fitness. We have solutions in the marketplace to address consumers needs, but we never had something that was a face-to-face experience. That’s where the partnership with STORY came in.
STORY was able to bring all of the elements of the retail experience, the merchandising, the ability to really create a buzz, drawing people in from the community and we’ve been able to complement that with some of the tools that we have like the Relaxation Pod, Coach by Cigna, the app.
We are interested in learning from this type of experience what consumers think.”
This trend and launch event for the new VR experience speaks to a larger trend that is playing out across industries, but is particularly notable when mentioning health and wellness: humans are plugging into things to disconnect. Yet, more and more storied companies will continue to use VR to augment their product offerings and find ways to connect with their customers. VR is a medium, not a fad. Go ahead: prepare to plug in to unplug.
Cigna | STORY | Unity Game Engine | Alienware
The Virtual Reality Debrief explores how the immersive capabilities of VR are transforming industries and becoming a powerful tool for storytelling in Advertising, Travel, Retail & more.
Originally published at www.psfk.com on January 29, 2016.