{"id":42,"date":"2019-02-27T17:40:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T17:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/?p=42"},"modified":"2019-02-27T20:01:05","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T20:01:05","slug":"at-csun-augmented-reality-games-for-the-elderly-from-the-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/2019\/02\/27\/at-csun-augmented-reality-games-for-the-elderly-from-the-young\/","title":{"rendered":"At CSUN, Augmented Reality Games For The Elderly From The Young"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"WomanBy: Lewis Dvorkin, Entrepreneur in Residence<\/h6>\n

My wife has many great sayings, none more true than this: \u201cThere are no accidents in life, only head-on collisions.\u201d That is, some things come flying right at you because they\u2019re meant to be \u2014 and you can\u2019t get out of the way.<\/p>\n

It happened to me last week, though it wasn\u2019t immediately clear. At the kick-off session for CSUN\u2019s 4th Annual Bull Ring New Venture Competition<\/a>, I was corralled by two energetic attendees. One, a young computer programmer, said: \u201cI build cool stuff (yes, he used a more descriptive phrase than that). You gotta see it.\u201d Really, I replied. Why? “Just come to Lilac Hall,” he answered with a smile.<\/p>\n

So, I did, and wham! It was the best kind of head-on collision.<\/p>\n

First, let me tell you a bit about 25-year-old Danny Matook. His story of growing up without is not uncommon at CSUN, though his details are a bit unique. His mother, he told me, decided to leave Chicago for Los Angeles when she was only 14. She started out at McDonald\u2019s, worked her way into a TV game show job, then the movie business. She had Danny and ended up raising him on her own. From the ages of 5 to 14, they were on the move. One year, it was LA. The next, Chicago. Then back to LA\u2026 and so on and so on, always living with a relative. \u201cWe never wanted to wear out our welcome,\u201d Danny said.<\/p>\n

Today, he\u2019s involved with this cool program housed in Lilac Hall, a collaborative research lab focused on \u201chealth equity.\u201d What\u2019s that, I asked? Basically, it means finding ways to resolve the disparities that negatively impact various socioeconomic groups as they navigate our medical industry complex. Lilac is part of a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health for BUILD PODER<\/a>. Okay, here comes a mouthful. It stands for Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity Promoting Opportunities for Diversity in Education and Research.<\/p>\n

What I was lured into seeing quickly hit home. My wife\u2019s 92-year-old mother, like so many her age, suffers from some form of dementia. This young man, who taught himself to code, is part of a development team building augmented reality games on Magic Leap to provide the elderly with what he calls \u201cpositive moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when he handed me a Magic Leap headset and its CPU on a shoulder strap. I started to \u201cplay\u201d a game his team is developing called Phonado (as in Sharknado). Did you ever see Minority Report with Tom Cruise or Disclosure with Michael Douglas? Both were waving their hands or gesturing arms to move, stack or shelve virtual photos and files. Now you have an idea what Phonado is all about.<\/p>\n

In Phonado, more than 100 photos of an elderly woman\u2019s life were loaded into the game, along with her favorite music. The woman could move the photos around, enlarge them or reposition them with the simple movement of her fist. In other words, her life in photos was floating through the headset before her eyes to enjoy. I watched a video of her positive emotional reaction to the images.<\/p>\n

Dementia patients, Danny said, can spiral upwards or downwards with positive or negative moments in their lives. That struck a deep chord with me. My wife and I got my mother-in-law something much more low-tech: a digital wooden music box loaded with big band tunes of her era. She just needed to lift the lid to start the music. The joy she got using it was heart warming.<\/p>\n

I asked Danny about the business model. After all, Magic Leaps are pricey items. They are, he answered, but healthcare facilities can afford them. True, I said. Plus, I told him, my generation is quite willing to cough up some dollars to make our parents\u2019 last days more peaceful.<\/p>\n

His team has a lot more work to do \u2014 and many other ideas for augmented reality games, including one with an Axolotl, a Mexican salamander, acting as kind of physical therapist. I encouraged Danny to stick with the Bull Ring competition to help hone the team\u2019s business thinking. Who knows, it could be one of life\u2019s great head-on collisions for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Lewis Dvorkin, Entrepreneur in Residence My wife has many great sayings, none more true than this: \u201cThere are no accidents in life, only head-on collisions.\u201d That is, some things come flying right at you because they\u2019re meant to be \u2014 and you can\u2019t get out of the way. It happened to me last week, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[20,21,15,9,22,23,19],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","tag-augmented-reality","tag-build-poder","tag-bull-ring","tag-csun","tag-health-equity","tag-lilac-hall","tag-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}