Khameleon VR:
Content Exploration for VR Classrooms
Role:
Product Designer / Visual Designer
Responsibilities:
UX Design, Visual Design
Year:
2016
Overview
This is focused primarily on Virtual Reality educational content for the classroom (Teachers + Students) (A Work-In-Progress & an Early Exploration)
Hypothesis
How can we make VR practical in an everyday classroom experience?
As laptops & tablets are becoming a standard for students in classrooms, I wanted to explore the idea of having Virtural Reality in curriculum. Inspired by Google Expeditions, it was a delight seeing how kids responded to taking field trips to different places on Earth and beyond.
Can VR be supplementary/complementary? or possibly a replacement/Online?
Research
During this phase, I interviewed two of my teacher friends on essentially the challenges they faced when teaching and leading a lesson. One was a science teacher and the other was a music teacher. This gave me insight and direction on what I was going to produce for my project.
From their experience, students responded well and showed understanding on class assignments that gave them the opportunity to partcipate vs. taking notes for a worksheet.
User:
My targeted user would be Educators who have experience with using technology in the classroom.
"There are many moments during class where I do formative assessments to ensure the students are understanding the lesson/concept..."
"...getting kids involved is a challenge, but one way was to take a movement sequence - Pop or Jazz - and before they start picking up an instrument and playing, get them to enjoy music and hopefully it'll get them tapping to the music with their feet."
“tell me and I forget,
show me
and I remember,
involve me and I learn”
- Benjamin Franklin
Sketches
What kind of content would be developed?
I started quite broadly and considered all grade levels and subjects. Eventually I narrowed down from grade school subjects to subjects that seemed and could be delightful to explore in VR. I ended up focusing on Science/Biology & Animals. I thought about how can we make content that would give students a sense of accomplishment, enlightenment & wonder.
How can we give students a deeper learning experience with VR? One that was memorable and impactful?
Wireframes & Mockups
The focus here is for the teachers to monitor the Students who were connected to the VR App. The tablet app, similar to Google Expeditions', will host the "Lesson/Lab/Quizzes." VR headsets will connect via WiFi.
All work-in-progress. As you can see in the wireframes here, I wanted to design content that would be immersive for the students. Because of the scale of VR, it was very important to take advantage of designing simple, large and colorful spaces.
Afterthoughts
There's still a lot to learn, discover and test with the work that I have. I'm looking forward to continue with my exploration and also the possibilities with "augmented reality" and the ability to test when developer tools for VR are available to prototype with.
