Socius VR

BusinessJuly 6, 2019

How virtual reality can help people with autism practice social interaction

Staff writers

Socius VR

The Lightbulb asks innovators and entrepreneurs how they turned their ideas into reality. This week we talk to Socius VR’s Anzel Singh who’s working to create VR videos for people with autism to practice social interaction.

First of all, give us your elevator pitch for Socius VR.

Socius VR is virtual reality system for people with autism to practice social interaction in a more comfortable and immersive environment. So if you want to practice situations [where you’re] making friends, going to a job interview, or any kind of social setting, you can practice it in VR so you can feel more confident and comfortable beforehand.

I understand you’ve got a couple of other people working with you on the team, can you tell me a little bit about them and what you’re all studying at university?

I’m in fourth year and it’s my final semester studying biological sciences and psychology. There are also two other co-founders: Weilian who’s getting her master’s in information systems, and Sarah who’s also studying biological sciences and psychology. I met Weilian at Summer Lab (University of Auckland’s business development programme), but I knew Sarah beforehand.

So what was it that sparked the idea for Socius VR? What was your lightbulb moment?

I guess it came up really randomly. When you do Summer Lab, you start out with an idea and you have to make a poster of it. I wanted to work in VR, but my idea initial idea was allowing you to try out different jobs. You could be a data scientist, a marketing director or a doctor so you can find out what they wanted to do in life.

The next day, Weilian saw my poster and we started talking because Weilian was working at a virtual reality store. She started talking about how she had someone with cerebral palsy come to the store and we got onto the topic of using VR to help people with disabilities. From there, we started discussing what kind of cognitive difficulties we thought we could help with and when we were doing our research, we found that difficulty with social interaction –which a lot of people with autism struggle with – was something that VR could be really useful for.

Socius VR co-founders, L-R: Sarah Mwashomah, Anzel Singh, Weilian Du (Photo: Supplied)

What was the reason for wanting to work with virtual reality in the first place?

I guess I was just really curious to work with technology that I felt like could maybe have a significance in the future. I think it came up randomly just because I had that [initial] idea – I really wanted to know what it would be like to try out different jobs and I thought VR was the closest thing to providing that. I didn’t really know about augmented reality before, but I wanted to work on a project that felt useful for the future because I think everyone’s in a rush to learn as much as they can about AI and machine learning and I just felt like virtual reality was something that was also kind of interesting.

Can you describe how the product will actually work? How will people with autism be able to practice social interaction?

So far, we’ve made a point-of-view video which is what the virtual reality video will eventually look like. We’re hoping that the content will be something people with autism will be able to use to practice and then apply to real life in the same way that psychologists use scripting methods to practice certain situations. When we were talking [to autism experts], they were telling us how when people with autism go into a new situation, they’ll often try and remember the last time they did something similar and use that information in real life. That’s when we thought: ‘What if they could practice this situation in a VR headset?’ That way, whenever they find themselves in a situation like meeting someone for the first time, they can be like, ‘Hey, I did this in VR!’ We thought this would allow them to have more options on the best way to interact if they ever felt anxiety about the situation. It hasn’t been completely tested yet because we’re still in the early stages, but that’s what we’re hoping for. Something that’s applicable.

So rather than focusing on gamification, it’s mostly focused on simulation.

Exactly. It’s definitely something that’s supposed to help people at least experience something similar before they do it in real life, especially if they’re uncomfortable doing it for the first time. We’ve heard about how it can be scary going to psychology sessions and having to go into group situations. We’ve also heard that a lot of people with autism tend to like technology, especially younger people, so it might be easier for them to practice using that method.

You said it was still in its early stages. Have you had a chance to test it out with people who do have autism yet?

No, not yet. We’ve talked about it with people with autism, but we haven’t shown the video to anyone with autism. [At this point], we’re interested in getting as much useful information as possible. We’re talking to Autism New Zealand, Altogether Autism, and autism specialists/psychologists. Right now, I think we’re in the stages of figuring out what would be the best simulation and to validate it with people with autism as soon as we can (hopefully, next month).

Example of what a job interview simulation might look like (Photo: Supplied)

Did you know much about autism before Socius VR?

I’d say it’s been quite a new experience, learning about autism and virtual reality at the same time. We really got most of our information from organisations like Altogether Autism who have given us so much advice.

As soon as we started the project, we started doing heavy research and going to events that the university was holding during Brain Awareness week. We tried to build as much expertise as we could, as generally as we could. But yeah, we didn’t really know anything at the start.

What’s been your biggest challenge so far?

I think the hardest thing was understanding what the best video to use would be and figuring out if that video could actually help people with autism. I think that’s what the fear was – what if it won’t even help anybody?

I think when we went to Autism New Zealand, we asked them questions like: ‘Do you even think this could work? How practical is it? And also, if we’re going to make a simulation, will this simulation good?’ One of the things we included [from talking to Autism New Zealand] was an understanding that sometimes, people with autism can take things very literally. So we included literal meanings in the video. So when the hiring manager says “take a seat”, we explained in the video that it means to sit down. And when the manager says “keep in touch”, we added something to explain what “keep in touch” meant.

I think we’re just at that stage of making sure that everything is perfect for someone with autism. We’ve made the video, but it needs to be the perfect speed – it needs to be slower and it needs to be easy to pause and play. It’s difficult because autism is a spectrum [and we have to make] sure we can make something that’s accessible to everyone.

What’s next for you guys?

The first VR video we want to have is the job interview video. We know there are videos out there for people with autism in VR, but they’re not really real people – they’re more graphic and animated. What we’re imagining is a video with real people, simulating a real job and is high quality. We eventually want to have an app that people can watch these videos on, and then have different modules and levels for different situations.

We want to really expand on as many videos as possible after we make the first one [which we’re hoping will come] at the end of this year.

Keep going!

PodcastsJuly 4, 2019

Container Door: How a career bringing goods out of China became a business

Simon Pound

Business is Boring host

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Ben Nathan, CEO and founder of Container Door.

You might have, like me, got an email out-of-the-blue from a friend asking you if you’d be keen to grab a piece of outdoor furniture. Or maybe a scooter, a mattress, or anything else you can think of in order to help them fill up a container and get it shipped here from overseas.

And then, like me, you might have gone to the website to find out what on earth they were on about and found a lot of things you weren’t aware you were in the market for. But they look pretty good and well priced, so you decide to fire off one of those emails to another friend yourself…

If you still don’t know what I’m on about, I’m talking about Container Door – an ingenious idea from long-time entrepreneur Ben Nathan. Prior to Container Door, Ben had taken many of the best-known brands in New Zealand apparel and found new homes, wider markets and new opportunities for them. If you’ve been keeping an eye on fashion for a while you’d know that brands like Norsewear, Principals and Barkers have all found new leases of life with Ben.

To talk the journey, the power of a brand and sourcing things people just need to have, Ben joined the podcast.

Either download this episode (right click and save), have a listen below or via Spotify, subscribe through iTunes (RSS feed) or read on for a transcribed excerpt.

Tell me about the rag trade, something I’m fascinated in. How did you get started in it, and what was the rag trade like? It used to be a huge industry in New Zealand, didn’t it?

I got into the rag trade through my family. My father was a New Zealand manufacturer back in the late 1960s and my mother was the designer. My father would go around and buy fabrics, organise production, and travel around the world. I grew up with my family travelling, rag trading, and that was a very traditional manufacturing business. It would get manufactured in New Zealand, and they would go out and sell garments to some of the older retailers – there aren’t many left now – and all the independents through New Zealand.

As I was growing up I found school a little bit difficult [so] I ended up going into the rag trade. My father sort of taught me from the very start [to get on an aeroplane to] China. He was quite an early adopter. By the age of about 23, I was jumping on aeroplanes two or three times a year to learn about China, importing, and negotiations. That’s really what got me started in the rag trade.

You’ve taken a number of large brands in New Zealand’s fashion landscape, and given them new lives when they’ve fallen on hard times or when the owners have decided to sell. How do you get into that?

I don’t sleep a lot so I’m always thinking of new ideas, and opportunities present themselves. It’s an industry I know very well and I suppose that I saw an opportunity when these brands came up for sale. I thought ‘hey I can make that work, I can fit that into my overhead structure, I can get that going’.

Rather than jumping in and buying it, I’d go around and make sure I had a market for it first before I spent any money on it. Once I got that ‘yes, we’re keen to do business with you, Ben’ then I’d purchase one of the brands.

It’s amazing. Every single time I’ve bought something or purchased a business or brand, it’s been very different. It’s when you learn from either your mistakes or your failures, or ‘I won’t do that again’. The next time you go and buy a brand or a business you go ‘oh I remember from last time, I’m not gonna do that’, so it’s really character building. You do learn a lot.

How did that sourcing inform your next business?

Maybe about 10 years ago, I was up in China and in a factory that was making some very well-known brands – those feather-down jackets – and back in those days it was the hottest thing. I saw these jackets going through the production line, and I think it was for Patagonia or North Face, or one of those big American brands. They had a retail ticket on the back of the neck saying US$400, and I went ‘woah, this is crazy!’ I asked the factory, ‘look at the cost price, what are they paying for it?’ I don’t remember the exact figures but it might have been something like US$60 or $65.

There’s a whole lot of money in between, so you know someone’s making a lot of money. I just had this thought [that] one day, surely, consumers will be able to group together as a community, and purchase the same item… from the factory themselves for maybe $75 or just a little bit more. So I went back to the hotel room and started sketching down these ideas. This was ten years ago.

[With the name], I was trying to think of consumers filling containers together, and once the containers are full the doors would close, and ship to people’s front doors… I wrote down all the categories: I thought we could do sports goods, apparel, homewares, and furniture. I started to get overexcited, which I tend to do. I took some A4 refill, wrote it down, put it in the bottom drawer, and I thought ‘the timing isn’t right, I’ve got a great apparel business, but one day I think this is gonna change’.