VR & AR Parent & Student Resource #4
Contributors
- Olivia Wenzel, Student & Founder of AltruTec, LLC, Ohio, United States
- Julie Smithson, Co-Founder of MetaVRse, XR Ignite & XR Collaboration, Ontario, Canada
- Reynaldo Zabala, Extended Reality Strategy Director of RazorEdge, Ohio, United States
- Fallon Brewington, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of the Sandhills, North Carolina, United States
- Rohit Chaube, Co-Founder of VRoKCs, Kansas City, United States
Introduction
TARGET AUDIENCE: Grades 6+
In our last issue, we presented more tech terms, took a deeper dive into locomoting through and interacting with 3D environments, and suggested an exciting new tool for creating 3D experiences online, the MetaVRse Engine.
In this issue, we’ll expand on our understanding of how immersive technologies are used in industry and introduce a 3D project to inspire young people’s curiosity.
Tech Term Reminders
Immersive Technologies
Immersive technologies encompass virtual reality, augmented reality, and other related technologies that use 3D to create or extend a reality.
Virtual Reality (VR)
VR is a simulation of a 3D environment viewed through a headset. With hand-held controllers, gaze, or other means, the user is able to interact with virtual content.
Augmented Reality (AR)
This technology places an image (a hologram) in a user’s view of the real world through digital devices, such as a smartphone, tablet, or headset.
New Tech Terms
Focal Length
This refers to the distance between a headset display and the user’s eyes. Some headsets allow the user to adjust this.
Latency
This refers to the delay between a user’s action and the technology’s reaction. Low latency is critical to a comfortable VR/AR experience. For example, low latency allows a user to turn their headset and immediately see the corresponding change in display in the headset.
Refresh Rate
This is the speed, measured in frames per second (FPS) or hertz (Hz), at which images are displayed in a virtual environment. The accepted minimum refresh rate for a comfortable VR experience is 90 FPS.
Blind Spot
Blind spots can refer to any of the following:
1. Areas in a VR display that the user’s eyes cannot see. Headsets may save processing power by cutting off the display in these areas.
2. Areas in the headset where images are not shown, but the user’s eyes can still see them.
3. Areas where cameras cannot track controllers or other external devices.
How are VR and AR Used in the Workplace?
Imperial College Healthcare is piloting a program in the U.K. with Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality headsets to minimize doctors’ exposure to COVID-19. A doctor wearing the headset sends a “secure live video-feed” to a team outside the room who can “share medical notes, scans and x-rays via the headset for the doctor to see while with the patient”.
Boeing’s Starliner program, which was developed in partnership with NASA, is using Varjo VR headsets to train astronauts for the “full spectrum of safety-critical scenarios, including operating the spacecraft and docking with the ISS”.
According to CTO Sven Gerject, Mattel’s “diverse teams of designers, engineers, marketers, and manufacturers” use Spatial — a startup offering virtual workspaces in the Oculus Quest, the Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, and the web — to collaborate virtually.
Mounting costs and slow progress from “physical mock-ups and drawing review” led McCarthy Building Companies to pivot to 3D renderings in VR and AR for their Providence Tarzana Medical Center in California project. These renderings provided “an easy way to view the designs, saving McCarthy and Providence time and money”.
Introducing Curiosity
Britannica cites curiosity as “the bedrock of learning, imagination, and innovation”. Epistemic curiosity inspires us to “eliminate information gaps and learn new explicit information”, while empathic curiosity leads us to learn more about “what other people think and feel”. According to behavioral scientist and professor of business administration Francesca Gino from the Harvard Business Review, in business, curiosity of every type engenders “fewer decision-making errors”, “more innovation” and “creative solutions”, and “better team performance”.
COVID-19 has raised a multitude of challenges, one of them being a disruption to children’s curiosity. In the monotony of social distancing, it’s easy to drown out hours behind the phone, forgetting about the art of inquiry and the communities beyond our immediate reach. Both adults and children sit blindly watching TikTok and YouTube or scrolling through social media feeds, waiting for a comment or an image to entertain them. How do we turn that consumption into a curiosity for real-world problems, problems that we need the next generation to solve? How do we use our home and family ecosystems and education systems to build the necessary skill sets to solve those problems?
To start, we must re-ignite the flame of curiosity in our children. We must inspire more divergent thinking which, according to Kneller GF in Introduction to the philosophy of education, “seeks multiple perspectives and multiple possible answers to questions and problems”, as opposed to convergent thinking, which “assumes that a question has one right answer and that a problem has a single solution”. Convergent thinking is rarely applicable in real-world problem-solving.
Today, through the power of data and automation, Google can answer any of our binary or fact-based questions. As Joseph Auon writes in his book Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, technology’s convergent abilities will continue to progress, but humans, who possess empathy and divergent perspectives, will be the ones to think critically and problem-solve, to arrive at world-changing solutions. The workforce already demands people who can think divergently and contribute in such a way. So, in the wake of a robotic society, nurturing divergent thinking in our children will open up opportunities for them to innovate and find meaningful work.
But how do we inspire curiosity? In her article “10 Strategies to Promote Curiosity in Learning”, Founder and Director of TeachThought Terry Heick tells us that when we encourage students to guide their learning through inquiry, when we make the subject-matter personal, when we form connections between the familiar and the unfamiliar, and when we reward their efforts, we can promote curiosity. At the root of everything, though, is instilling a sense of purpose. Giving purpose to kids through missions and goals builds curiosity.
With all of this in mind, our committee has developed The Curiosity Project to re-inspire young people’s curiosity and help them build the skill sets necessary to become change-makers. Over the next five issues, beginning with this one, we’ll guide your child from a mission and a goal to divergent thinking, prototyping, and problem-solving. Along the way, they’ll also explore immersive technologies. All of this will culminate in an interactive, animated, 3D project. In the last issue, we’ll invite you and your child to submit photos and videos of the 3D project so we can honor them in our social media and they can inspire others.
The Curiosity Project Phase 1
Prompt: What concept is difficult to learn in school? How could it be improved with 3D?
1. Review the prompt.
Read this prompt over a few times, and then break it down. Think about your experiences in school. What do you particularly enjoy learning? What do you struggle with? What do your peers struggle with? What makes these topics difficult to learn?
Now, think about those topics spatially. How could they be visualized in three dimensions, in 360°? What do they look like from all angles, every perspective? How could these visualizations become interactive? How could they become a game? Why might this improve your learning experience? Why might it not?
ACTION: Write and/or sketch your answers to the above questions. Note the topic(s) you’re focusing on. Is it a math equation? A science lab? An art project? Something else? Have you not narrowed the topic down yet? In any case, start visualizing 3D, spatial representations of your chosen topic(s).
2. Research.
Develop a list of open-ended, unbiased questions about your chosen topics and the 3D spatial representation(s) you visualized. Perhaps that list will include the same ones you asked yourself. Regardless, focus on the “Why” and the “How?”, not so much the “What?”.
ACTION: Write down your research questions, conduct interviews, and search the Internet. Then, consult your peers, teachers, parents, and the Internet. Reflect on your findings, and note the following: Did the answers surprise you? Did they challenge your assumptions or reaffirm them? Did you identify any patterns in their answers? Do you need to ask different questions and conduct more research? What are your takeaways? What are the different perspectives on that topic you originally identified as challenging? After you’ve reflected on those questions, decide whether or not you need to continue researching.
3. Define the problem and the audience.
Now that you’ve conducted research and, hopefully, identified some patterns in people’s challenges with learning, it’s time for you to define the problem you’re solving. What concept is difficult to learn in school? Why is it difficult? That’s your problem. Who faces this problem? That’s your target audience.
ACTION: Define your topic of focus. Define why this topic is challenging and why it is important that we address this. Lastly, define who faces this challenge and why it is important to them.
4. Ideate.
If your interviews and research haven’t led to a lightbulb moment yet, that’s okay. There are a number of exercises you can perform to get those creative juices flowing. Below are some suggested by Agne Strimaityte from the Innovation Lab that focus on divergent thinking, which you can apply to your 3D project.
- Alternate Uses — With your newly defined problem and audience, take three minutes to jot down as many different 3D (animated and/or interactive) projects you can think of.
- Impossible Objects — If you’re having trouble visualizing a digital 3D solution, connect with a partner to come up with two random objects. Then, work to connect those two objects into an interesting 3D project.
- 10 ideas in 10 minutes — For 10 minutes, let go of feasibility, difficulty, and visual aesthetic, and push yourself to come up with 10 ideas for your project. This exercise “puts a lot of stress on using creative constraints and pushing ideation to its best”.
- 30 Circles — In 30 circles, sketch different viewpoints of the 3D visualization(s) you have in mind.
ACTION: Complete at least 2 of the brainstorming exercises described above with at least one peer. Then decide how you will, if at all, incorporate your new ideas in your 3D project. Take some time to write about and sketch the 3D project. From a high level (we will flesh this out in the next issue), consider how it will be animated and/or interactive, as well as how you might make it accessible to people with sensory impairments and/or other challenges.
5. Seek feedback and adjust.
Now, it’s time to discover the depth and dimensions of your solution. Return to the people you interviewed earlier, approach others, and ask for feedback on your idea(s). The key question here is “Why?”. What do they like about your solution(s) and why? What don’t they like about your solution(s) and why? Again, identify patterns in their answers and make adjustments where appropriate. You may discover that you need to re-think your solution(s) entirely or that you’re solving a different problem. Be open and receptive to feedback, keep asking questions, and adapt as necessary.
ACTION: Conduct more interviews to garner feedback on your newly ideated solution. Take time to understand people’s perspectives and ensure that, within reason, they are accounted for. If needed, re-define your problem and audience and tweak your 3D visualization ideas.
6. Define the prototype.
Over the next few issues of the VR & AR Parent & Student Resource, you’ll be developing a prototype of your selected solution. A prototype is an early model that will test the feasibility and efficacy of your concept and will clarify the problem you’re solving and the value you’re providing.
ACTION: Consider the core of your problem — the school topic that is challenging to learn — and the 3D project ideas you’ve been planning and gathering feedback on. What assumptions are you still making about your solution? Write and sketch what features (visual, auditory, animated, and interactive) you need to include in your project in order to test those assumptions.
In the next issue, we’ll flesh out the plans for your prototype by building a wireframe, and we’ll incorporate software development-, 3D-, virtual reality-, and augmented reality-specific considerations.
Takeaways
Check out this issue’s recommended resource, Lego Coding Activities for Kids, from Little Bins For Little Hands to continue learning, researching, tinkering, and, most importantly, staying curious!
Ideas for this resource were fostered by the VR/AR Association Student Committee. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @vrarastudents.
