Project VHS (NASA)
Tools: Unity / Primary role: Lead Game Designer
The Virtual Human Simulator is a simulation-based learning framework built for NASA to train astronauts in various medical concepts and scenarios. The goal of the program is to create materials that space flight crews can use to maintain their health and manage urgent and emergent medical care autonomously during long-term, manned exploration missions.
Want to know more about Level Ex’s work with NASA? Check out this Level Ex blog post!
My Responsibilities
Led discovery alongside biomedical specialist colleagues:
· Worked with TRISH stakeholders to identify to key learning objectives to be featured in gameplay.
· Worked with medical team to interview astronaut SMEs as part of medical training gap analysis to determine simulator content.
Development
· Wrote and maintained GDD, used to track and communicate all features of the experience to the development team throughout the experience.
· Created initial mock-ups of features and screens. Worked with UX designers to translate these into Figma.
· Represented design during meetings with external stakeholders throughout the grant year. Acted as the principle design resource, responsible for pitching concepts, interpreting client feedback and communicating changes between the client and the development team.
My team worked in close partnership with the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) to build the two major components of the experience. The first one was the anatomy viewer shown above, which was used to simulate the human body's anatomical and physiological changes in space, demonstrating how medical devices and procedures function differently in microgravity.
The second major piece was a medical scenario featuring a dynamic ultrasound simulation. The goal of this scenario was to teach astronauts how to diagnose an IJV occlusion, starting with analyzing the patient’s chief complaint to eventually using a hand-held ultrasound probe to identify a thrombus in the vessel.
One thing that was really important to me was for the two sides of the experience to talk to each other. As shown in this user flow diagram, I created hooks to encourage the player to access the medical scenarios from the relevant condition in the anatomy viewer (and vice versa). This also created a framework where more content can be added in context to the existing materials, creating a product that is easy to navigate and more meaningful overall.
Here’s an early mock of the anatomy viewer showing the ability to recommend specific training scenarios and allow the player to navigate to them directly from the condition page.
