Yuewei Zhang is a XR developer and enthusiast who has been creating commercial VR games since 2016. He is currently studying at the University of Auckland as a 2nd year undergraduate Software Engineering student.
Yuewei aims to be at the forefront of developing virtual reality applications. He enjoys experimenting with creating interactive media only possible in XR, whether that be art, games or research, and their empathic outcome. Areas he is working on at the moment include finding novel ways of incorporating storytelling, music and creative programming into extended reality.
Over 36,000 Kiwis experience Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) per year. TBI patients often experience severe cognitive fatigue, which impairs their ability to cope well in public/social settings. Rehabilitation can involve taking people into social settings with a therapist so that they can relearn how to interact in these environments. However, this is a time-consuming, expensive and difficult process. To address this, we've created the TBI Cafe, a VR tool designed to help TBI patients cope with their injury and practice interacting in a cafe. In this application, people in VR practice ordering food and drink while interacting with virtual characters. Different types of distractions are introduced, such as a crying baby and loud conversations, which are designed to make the experience more stressful, and let the user practice managing stressful situations. Clinical trials with the software are currently underway.