Thoughts on participating in the Spark Challenge 2017

Written by Majunyang (Serena) Xiao

I heard about the spark challenge through the newsletters from UCL Careers Service. I am attracted by the focus on youth loneliness in the UK, which is definitely one of the most pressing issues concerning mental wellbeing of young people in the UK. As an undergraduate student myself, I could actually relate to this problem and have thought about various possibilities to fill in the ‘void’. This challenge conducted by the Tata Consultancy Service aims to utilize technology to tackle this problem. I see full potential in this discussion as the advancement of technology surely could provide a direction for a sustainable solution.

There are in total six candidates in the final round of the challenge and each of us is required to give a five-minute presentation to the panel judges who will prompt questions at the end of our presentation.

I proposed a solution that I call Metaverse. Various research and papers suggest that the university students here in the UK are feeling increasingly lonely and the main reasons attribute to the fact that they leave their support networks and tend to feel extra self-conscious when making new friends. So the main goal of my proposal boils down to two main sectors – first, to give the shy students the extra push they need to meet new people. Second, to provide mental reassurance and readiness through a fun VR experience.

Metaverse is platform that combines 3-D virtual gaming and social net-working. In the game, every user registers with their testified personality type (Myers-Briggs-type indicator) and preferred type of social interaction, hobbies and locations. Those information will form tags that will be matched between users and generate group activity recommendations. So in order to level up in the game, players will need to accomplish the social interaction tasks chosen and upload group photos for verification purposes. The incentives for them to level up in the game would be the unlocking of wider-range of VR game models which are definitely a hit among young users. So in short, this game would be an easy way for young people to step out of their comfort zone and give them naturally common topics to talk about, for example, their reasons of joining the game and so on.

Why would VR games be such a strong incentive? Because they have almost inexhaustible resources for us to explore. Here are some of the lately established game models that enable players to talk to each other in a common space. You play sports, you can go traveling, sit on the edge of the cliff together, watch a movie without extra costs, you list it. Among the three currently available VR sets, I would recommend promoting the use of PlayStation, as the ps 4 and ps VR combined cost less than the gaming pc you need to run the other two. Users could also choose to connect to their Facebook account to invite more friends and secretly those who they wanted to meet but not yet have a good reason to.

Although some people are concerned about addiction to the games, but I would say this differs from other games, unlike other video games the grading system essentially depends on real-life interactions, so the games are simply a supplement and a less daunting way to encourage people to speak to strangers.

Considering that students may not be able to afford the expensive game, stations of VR gaming could be set up on campuses or local health organisations in which students could access to the facilities. There is also a high chance that we could collaborate with the Mind organisation in the UK which conducts regular workshop about mental wellbeing. We could also draw from the Mayor’s Fund for Young People’s Resilience and Inclusion with a worth of £3.2 million to help ensure that young people have built the necessary strong social connections.

Future possibilities include collaborations with volunteering units that would provide a meaningful shared social interaction, or merchandisers who would sponsor vouchers to users. Most importantly, this gaming platform would provide the health organization with necessary information to monitor mental health among university students.

The other five candidates are all from different universities such as the University of Glasgow and University of Warwick. Everyone has their unique selling point, some really interesting ideas draw my attention, for example, creating an event-generating system that allow no less than four participants as having a minimum of four people in a group activity is proved to be the sweet spot where no one will be left out in the interaction. There are also ideas on creating alarm system that could enhance level of safety for young users to meet new friends from on on-line connections. This competition also trains our presentation skill and ability to respond to questions in a logical and confident manner, maximizing our unique selling point. I also had amazing opportunities to communicate with TCS consultants as well as partners of TCS that include non-profit organizations such as Dame Kelly Holmes Trust working on empowering youth in the UK. It was indeed a fruitful session for me to make friends with peer presenters who also care about mental wellbeing and also exchanged meaningful insights on various youth problems and successful case studies with the various organisations. I therefore definitely recommend this spark challenge to future participants from UCL.

 

Further reading – https://www.ucl.ac.uk/current-students/support/ssw/0000-mind/spark-challenge