F.I.S.H.
A Collaborative Design Project at the Intersection of Virtual Reality and Social Interaction
Through a quite involved and multifaceted process, I had the opportunity to work on an incredible team on a project centered around Virtual Reality (VR). In creating this final deliverable, I was able to contribute to user research, get my first ever experience working with VR technology, learn more about physical fabrication, and develop my visual design skills. I was also given the opportunity to assist in presenting our findings and decisions to our client, which led to real-world developments and changes to our final deliverable. As a note, the aspects of this project included below are ones I directly contributed to, and as a result, some aspects of the process have been omitted or cut down for clarity on my impact to the final deliverable.
What is S.E.E.?
This past summer I participated in the Summer Experience in EnVision, also known as S.E.E. In this program, I joined an interdisciplinary team of students from UC San Diego. We were given a real world client, a design prompt, and 10 weeks to design and fabricate a functional deliverable to our client's specifications. Through these 10 weeks, we communicated constantly with our client, the exhibit staff of the Birch Aquarium at Scripps.
The Team
Our interdisciplinary team was made up of 8 Engineering Students, one Cognitive science student, and myself, an interdisciplinary Computing and the arts student. Our leadership was made up of two project managers, Jon Paden, a Recent MFA Graduate, and Daniel Yang, a PHD Candidate in the Electrical Engineering Department. Our program leader was Jesse DeWald, director of the EnVision Arts and Engineering Maker Studio.
DESIGN BRIEF
Our project began by meeting with our client, The Birch Aquarium at Scripps, to discuss their needs, understand the scope of the project, and to kick off our working relationship that would continue for the next 10 weeks. The Aquarium's exhibit staff wanted us to create a vehicle to showcase 3D video they had of the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) off the coast of La Jolla, a huge focus of both the aquarium and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. They wanted us to create something that would not only showcase the video they had, but to do so in a way that was exciting for both the children and adults who visit the aquarium every day.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS REVIEW
After some initial discussion with the exhibit staff at the Birch Aquarium, my team had our first formal client presentation, known as a System Requirements Review. In this presentation, we worked in broad strokes, reiterating what we understood to be the most important overarching factors to consider while designing our prototypes for our final deliverable.
In our previous discussions, a huge talking point was the high number of children who visit the aquarium, and the specific challenges they present. We had to design something extremely durable and safe, keeping them in mind. The deliverable also had to be easy to move, as the space in the aquarium it would occupy would need to be cleared regularly for events.
Finally, our client really stressed the importance of Social interaction as a vehicle for engagement from children and families. While safety, durability, and portability are fairly easy constraints to work within, the desire for social interaction in a medium dominated by headsets was daunting, to say the least.
DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS
After our System Requirements Review, we took our incredibly broad system requirements that we presented, and extrapolated from them more concrete design specifications. This process was part of our initial process of ideation, which focused particularly on the different ways we could showcase the 3D environment of the Marine Protected Area in a social way.
USER TESTING (part 1)
Early on, my team was interested in getting data on how museum visitors interact with different off-the-shelf solutions for viewing 3D video. To get more information, we brought an iPad and a VR headset to the Birch aquarium. We then invited people to try them both out, and surveyed them about their experience. We also took notes on our observations of any social interaction between users.
We found that while people vastly preferred the immersive nature of the VR headset, we observed significantly more social interaction when users interacted with our tablet display. We also found that people had difficulty adjusting the straps on the back of the VR headset, and that many simply held it against their face with their hands instead of dealing with adjusting it.
PRELIMINARY DESIGN REVIEW
After completing user testing, myself and the rest of my team broke up in to four groups. Each group was responsible for developing and pitching a deliverable concept to our client, all in one meeting we called our preliminary design review.
The group that was selected presented a VR headset built in to a plush fish head, with the idea that visitors would be given a fun photo opportunity when they explored the MPA looking like a fish. The group also presented the possibility of screen mirroring, which while requiring a tethered connection to a computer, allows for a screen to display in real time what the VR user is seeing in their headset.
USER TESTING (PART 2)
With our new design selected and approved by our client, we were left to figure out how to create the best experience for our users at Birch. I acted as team leader for second round of user testing, focused on two factors: how to mount our headset and if having a wired connection (to show a live feed of the user's headset) created noticeable change in user engagement and social interaction.
We found that children and adults had a harder time using the hanging headset, and that people loved the mirroring screen. We observed users talking with each other and clearly using the screen as a social tool to talk about what they saw on their journey through the MPA.
SILICONE MASKS
After working on user testing, I joined a team that was working on developing a workflow and working prototype of a silicone rubber mask for our VR headset, to replace the previously proposed fabric headset cover. During this time, we had multiple teams working on various other parts of our final deliverable, including creation of a final fabric mask so that we could present both options to our client.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
final Preparing for our final meeting with our client before shipping our final deliverable, we finalized 3 factors of our design. Based on our results from user testing, we agreed upon building a headset with a podium base, a wired connection for screen mirroring, as well as technical documentation and materials for creating both the soft and light fabric cover as well as the more sanitary silicone headset cover.
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN REVIEW
For our final client meeting, known as our conceptual design review, we presented findings from 2nd round of user testing, as well as our resulting final design considerations. This presentation culminated in an overview of our final deliverable. This meeting was the last opportunity for the client to make any changes before receiving our final deliverable. Fortunately, the staff from Birch agreed with our design decisions, and approved our final deliverable concept.
FINAL DELIVERABLE
On the final day of S.E.E. 2019, we delivered our finished deliverable and presented it, along with our design process, to the entire Birch staff. After our presentation, we then allowed everyone from the staff to interact with our exhibit prototype. It was incredibly rewarding to see people become immersed in a product that I had a hand in designing, solidifying my already budding interest in design as a career.
Working as a designer over the summer at S.E.E. wasn't just an incredibly rewarding experience. It also helped me to get my foot in the door at EnVision, joining their student staff for my senior year. EnVision allowed me to vastly improve my own fabrication and design skills while interacting closely with engineering and art students, assisting them with the same fabrication tools I had learned how to use while I helped to design and build the F.I.S.H. headset!
If you would like any more information on this project, please check out here for my team's full technical documentation