vect | nathenia

Project Overview

VR Training for Healthcare Education

Ageism remains a significant issue in healthcare, often shaping how older adults are treated and contributing to poorer health outcomes.

As part of the 2025 Student Service Design Challenge (SSDC) capstone, a multidisciplinary team developed VECT (Virtual Examination for Certification and Training). A VR training platform that uses immersive simulations and AI-driven feedback to help healthcare professionals recognize and overcome age-related bias, fostering empathy and more equitable care for older patients.

Timeframe

Team

4 Months

4 Business & Design

Students

(Jan - Apr 2025)

Role

Co - Designer

UX + UI Design, Visual design, Branding, User flow, Research, Prototyping + Testing

Tools

Figma, Fig Jam, Google Forms, Illustrator, Miro Board

The Challenge

Recognizing and overcoming age bias in healthcare.

Healthcare professionals and medical students need better ways to recognize and address age-related bias in clinical settings. Older adults are often dismissed or given less autonomy due to unconscious ageism. With limited geriatric training despite an aging population, there is a clear need for practical, empathy-building tools to improve care for older adults.

Objective/Goal

This UX design project aims to create VECT (Virtual Examination for Certification and Training), a virtual reality training platform that helps healthcare professionals and medical students recognize and overcome age-related bias. Through immersive simulations and AI-driven feedback, VECT provides a safe environment to practice clinical decision-making, improve communication, and build empathy.

The goal is to foster fair, compassionate care for older adult patients while strengthening trust and improving healthcare outcomes.

Research

To understand ageism in healthcare, interviews were held with medical students and professionals to identify biases, barriers, and training needs. A review of existing programs showed that current modules and case studies don’t fully address unconscious bias in clinical practice.

Most existing programs either focus on theoretical learning or technical skills.
There’s a lack of scalable, interactive training specifically targeting ageism and unconscious bias.
VECT’s combination of VR simulations, AI-driven feedback, and structured learning modules fills this gap, offering practical, repeatable, and accessible training.

User Interviews

Conduct in-depth interviews current healthcare professionals and medical students to explore their experiences with older adult patients, challenges in providing care, and existing training resources.

Key Questions

1.

How do unconscious biases influence healthcare professionals’ interactions and decisions with older adult patients?

2.

What systemic and educational gaps prevent healthcare professionals and students from delivering patient-centered care to older adults?

3.

How can experiential training, like VR simulations, improve empathy, communication, and awareness of ageism in healthcare?

Key Insights

Unseen Ageism

Ageist biases are widespread but often subtle. Many healthcare workers are unaware of their assumptions about older patients, leading to overlooked concerns and diminished care.

Time and Workload Constraints

High patient volumes and heavy workloads reduce the time professionals can spend with older adults, negatively affecting communication, attention, and care quality.

Training Gaps and Opportunities

Existing education provides minimal geriatric training, leaving students and professionals underprepared. Interactive, experiential tools like VR simulations can increase awareness, build empathy, and improve clinical decision-making.

Supporting Facts

Nurses, despite frequent contact with older adults, often have less accurate knowledge of aging and view geriatric care as low-status work (Wells et al., 2004, as cited in Henry, Coundouris, & Nangle, 2024).

Few nursing students intend to specialize in gerontological nursing, with many attributing their lack of interest to negative pre-existing attitudes toward older adults (Magan et al., 2023).

?

Fewer than half of medical and nursing students report willingness to work with older adults in the future, indicating low motivation to engage in geriatric care (Dobrowolska et al., 2019).

Nearly half (47%) of medical and nursing students report witnessing overt age discrimination in healthcare, where ageist language and assumptions influence clinical decision-making and patient treatment (Dobrowolska et al., 2019).

Customer Journey Maps

Insights from interviews informed personas of healthcare professionals and medical students, highlighting their challenges and needs when caring for older adults to guide VECT’s training design.

Points of View

Healthcare professionals need reflective, practical training to recognize unconscious age bias and deliver equitable, patient-centered care to older adults.

Medical and nursing students need engaging, real-world learning experiences that build empathy, communication skills, and confidence before clinical practice.

Healthcare institutions need scalable training solutions that fit busy curricula while improving care quality and reducing age-related bias.

How Might We

How might we help healthcare professionals identify and reduce unconscious age bias in real clinical interactions?

How might we use immersive learning to build empathy and improve communication with older adult patients?
How might we deliver a scalable, effective training system that integrates education, practice, and assessment within healthcare education?

User Flow

The user flow was mapped out, focusing on students and healthcare professionals signing in, accessing their course information, and receiving guidance on obtaining and setting up their VR headsets for training.

Low - Mid Fidelity Wireframes

The team mapped the flow from login to accessing courses, connecting the VR headset, and entering simulations. Low-fidelity wireframes explored layouts and onboarding, inspired by UWaterloo Learn.

Branding

VECT’s branding is calm, professional, and approachable, reflecting its mission to support healthcare professionals and students in delivering unbiased care.

Colours: Shades of blue and grey convey reliability, calm, and a modern, supporting a user-friendly look.

Typography: Clean, legible fonts ensure clarity and professionalism across devices.

Moodboard: Imagery and design focus on learning, empathy, and technology, portraying confident, engaged healthcare professionals and students in clinical and VR settings. The overall mood is welcoming, clear, and supportive, guiding users through the training experience.

High - Fidelity

After finalizing the branding and mid-fidelity wireframes, we designed the high-fidelity screens and built the final prototype. This included a simulation of what users will experience during their VR training session, allowing us to test the flow and gather feedback.

Future Impact

VECT represents a step toward addressing systemic ageism in healthcare education through immersive, empathetic training. The following future directions outline how the platform could evolve to create long-term impact across healthcare institutions.

AI-Driven Personalization: Tailor learning paths and feedback to individual bias patterns, strengthening empathy and clinical decision-making.

Institutional Partnerships: Integrate VECT into university curricula, hospitals, and certification programs as a recognized standard for bias training.

Expanded VR Scenarios: Include diverse patient cases and interdisciplinary team interactions to practice age-inclusive care in real-world contexts.

Education and Advocacy: Provide content on the social and ethical impacts of ageism, promoting systemic change alongside skills development.

Prototype

Learnings & Takeaways :)

Throughout the VECT capstone project, I explored how VR technology can address age bias in healthcare while designing for multiple stakeholders. This experience strengthened my collaboration skills, research approach, and ability to translate insights into impactful, user-centered solutions.

Team Collaboration & Communication

Working within a multidisciplinary team reinforced the value of diverse perspectives. Through presentations, feedback sessions, and design iterations, I learned how to clearly communicate decisions, integrate feedback effectively, and align UX strategy with business and technical considerations.

Empathy-Driven Research & Design

Researching the experiences of healthcare professionals, students, and older adults deepened my understanding of designing for real-world impact. I strengthened my ability to prioritize accessibility, clarity, and relevance when shaping VR training experiences.

Iteration & Validation

Prototyping and refining wireframes and VR simulations highlighted the importance of continuous testing and validation. Structured feedback helped us prioritize features and improve usability, reinforcing that meaningful design evolves through iteration.

The team behind VECT ヽ(•‿•)ノ