UniVRsity
UniVRsity is a VR application designed to aid collaborative learning in classrooms. The solution aims to ease communication and collaboration and increase student engagement in both virtual and real world classrooms.
My Role
Interaction Designer
User Researcher
Unity Developer
My Key Contributions
Domain Research
Storyboards
Low-Fidelity Mockups
Interactive Prototype
Tools
Unity
Maya
AfterEffects
Problem Space
"How can we utilize upcoming technologies to increase the affordance of collaboration and decrease the cognitive load in collaborative educational settings?"
Process
Domain Research
We conducted 6 contextual inquiries in both physical classrooms as well as online classrooms to understand the structure of a collaborative classroom and gain insights into the expectations of students from each other and the instructor.
Affinity Diagramming helped us get a high-level view of the problem but constructing collaboration model and artifact model helped us lay out the different interactions the student had and identify breakdowns. We created collaboration model and artifact model to gain a better understanding of the nuances of interactions of students with the instructor and with each other.
Collaboration Model
Models
Engagement
Collaboration
Communication
The Struggle
The pain points of the teachers and students can be boxed under the following categories.
Brainstorming and Visioning Session
We individually brainstormed for 10- 15 ideas prior to a team brainstorming session. This helped us have a more productive team brainstorm session and each of us brought a unique perspective to the solution. We used a homebrewed set of envisioning cards to explore design options.
By the end of the brainstorming session, we picked three ideas which we pursued. To help us decide which of the solutions would address the problem the best, we conducted a visioning session. During the visioning session, we decided that the problem would be addressed best with a near future solution over an immediate fix with widely used technology.
Visioning Session- The Big 3
The Solution
A VR-based classroom which allows users to collaborate and engage in the classroom. The solution provides a framework for critique and presentation. It also provides a standardized set of tools like the in-class virtual blackboard for ease collaboration and communication pain-points.
Sketching
Storyboarding to explore the concept
Concept Prototype