Explore Your Needs and Build Your Own Oasis are two interactive WebAR experiences built by Z.38 Health as part of an experimental digital therapeutics initiative. Designed to support emotional clarity and self-regulation, both projects use evidence-based psychological principles to guide users through short, engaging sessions, directly in the browser.

Created with Niantic Studio, these experiences demonstrate the potential of immersive tools not just for entertainment, but for supporting mental health. With accessibility and user agency at the core, Z. 38 Health is exploring how browser-based AR can make wellness tools more engaging and widely available.

We spoke with the team to understand their motivation, what tools helped bring these ideas to life, and where they see AR fitting into the future of digital healthcare.

What inspired you to create these experiences?
We were inspired by how apps like Pokémon Go have been shown to improve people’s mental health, especially in how they encourage movement, presence, and engagement. That got us thinking—what if AR could be used more directly to support mental health treatment?

These two experiences are part of a broader experimental study to see how AR could make therapy-based activities more accessible and interactive. The idea was to bring psychological tools into a format that’s easy to access, easy to use, and engaging enough to encourage repeated interaction.

We’re interested in how these kinds of lightweight, browser-based experiences can act as bridges between traditional care and everyday use.

How did Niantic Studio help bring your vision to life?

Niantic Studio was essential in helping us realize both experiences. Its combination of a visual editor and programmable architecture gave us the flexibility to prototype quickly while building interactive logic that responded to user input in meaningful ways.

Some of the tools and features that made the biggest impact:

• The Visual Editor made scene creation and iteration smooth and intuitive
• The @8thwall/ecs system allowed us to build a robust button input handler (inputController)
• We adapted the Tap Place component from a sample project to create a simple but effective touch-based placement mechanic
• Studio’s support for JavaScript and Three.js lets us tailor logic for behavior, transitions, and animation
• Sample projects provided an excellent foundation and saved us significant ramp-up time
  

Being able to quickly test and refine interactions made Studio a great fit for rapid experimentation.

What challenges did you face during development?

As newcomers to WebAR development, one of the biggest hurdles was setting up scenes and understanding how to work with 3D assets. Getting comfortable with ECS and understanding how to structure component logic took time.

Performance optimization was also something we had to focus on. Making sure that our scenes ran smoothly on mobile devices required us to:

• Compress and resize 3D models
• Manage input areas carefully to avoid accidental overlaps
• Debug component interactions and event timing
• Use the Studio debugger and console output extensively to track behavior
  

Niantic Studio’s documentation and sample projects helped us overcome those challenges. The interface was user-friendly enough to keep us moving forward while we learned.

What were the key steps in building your projects?

• Research and inspiration – We began by exploring existing AR/VR projects to understand effective interaction models and user flows.
• Scene creation – We built our environments in Niantic Studio, using examples and documentation to structure each experience.
• Interaction logic – We implemented the core gameplay mechanics using custom components in the @8thwall/ecs framework.
• Playtesting and iteration – Frequent testing helped us fine-tune both the technical behavior and the user experience.
• Content layering – We added reflection prompts and emotional cues to ensure each experience stayed grounded in therapeutic purpose.

What advice would you give to other developers using Niantic Studio?

• Use sample projects as a foundation—they offer real insight into how things are wired behind the scenes
• Tap into the community and documentation—you’re not alone, and there’s a lot of knowledge out there
• Start small and experiment freely—AR is a flexible space, and rapid iteration will help you find what works
• Pay attention to the user experience—just because it’s AR doesn’t mean it can be complex. Make it intuitive
• Keep learning—tools are always improving, and staying current will make your next project easier and better

Where do you see the future of AR, and Niantic Studio’s role in it?

We see real potential for AR in mental health and healthcare more broadly. Augmented reality can offer immersive, emotionally engaging environments for reflection, stress management, or skill-building, especially for people who might not engage with traditional tools.

Niantic Studio lowers the barrier to entry for building those kinds of experiences. It’s flexible enough to support rapid prototyping, yet powerful enough to deliver interactive content at scale. That balance is exactly what we need when working at the intersection of creativity and clinical insight.

Try it for yourself

These two experiences from Z.38 Health show how developers can use Niantic Studio to create AR content that’s both technically creative and emotionally impactful. As browser-based tools continue to evolve, we’re excited to see more projects at the intersection of well-being and interaction design. Get started with one of the following sample projects from Z.38 Health: 

1. Mental Health AR-Experience: Build your own Oasis 
2. Mental Health AR-Experience: Explore your Needs

Ready to bring your ideas to life? Start building with Niantic Studio and see what’s possible in the browser.