Virtual Social Worker Trainer (Current)
The GApp Lab - University of Utah
My current project at the GApp Lab that I have been working on for the past year is the Virtual Social Worker Trainer - a suite of VR, mobile and web software that is designed to give child welfare social workers repeated practice on evaluating homes and caretakers based on various factors and skills.
Drawing on my prior experience, I served as both an engineer and producer for this project, encompassing a wide array of responsibilities across multiple disciplines.
- Managing 3 major software projects
- Overseeing a development team of 8
- Collaborating closely with professors from the Department of Population Health Sciences
- Braking down requirements and feature requests into actionable tasks
- Delegating tasks to engineers and artists based on their skills and capabilities
- Planning sprints, milestones and timelines for the team using Trello and Kanban boards.
- Designing solutions to engineering problems on each project
- Handling documentation and wrap kits for each semester
- Optimizing of content creation and integration processes
- Making wireframe mockups of UIs for artists to design
- Implementing new features and UIs for VR in Unity
Under my guidance and engineering expertise, the project experienced significant advancement and development, surpassing previous years’ achievements by meeting all our milestones and achieving several stretch goals.
The VSWT suite comprises of 3 core components.
Virtual Home Simulation
A VR and PC serious game that simulates the experience of a social worker walking through and assessing a home and caregivers for child welfare.
VHS Trailer
Virtual Motivational Interviewing
A mobile app that trains social workers on how to handle interviewing with caregivers through simulation interviews and exercises that target various interviewing skills.
VMI Trailer
Web Dashboard
A web app that tracks displays visualizations of data collected from the training tools. This is designed for educators to asses the performance of their students. The app uses role based authentication to restrict various levels of access of data and admin functionality.