About the Semester in Alternate Realities

Semester in Alternate Realities (SIAR) pro­poses a unique edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence meant to inspire inter­dis­ci­pli­nary teams to solve a real-world prob­lem explor­ing Virtual real­ity (VR) and hybrid VR phys­i­cal instal­la­tions. In this project-based course, par­tic­i­pants will be chal­lenged to develop solu­tions using tech­nolo­gies such as VR (e.g., Meta Quest head-mounted dis­plays) and immer­sive multi-modal media instal­la­tions. In addi­tion to focus­ing on the co-construction of dig­i­tal pro­to­types afford­ing mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences in “alter­nate real­i­ties”, our objec­tive is to stim­u­late doc­u­mented reflec­tion and dis­cus­sion through­out the process. Participants can expect to work col­lab­o­ra­tively, be matched accord­ing to the skills they bring, and be pro­vided time and resources to learn new tech­niques and approaches, soft– and hard skills, and processes to con­duct user research.

Participants will get the oppor­tu­nity to reflect on future tech­nolo­gies and their poten­tial impact on the world, and improve their pre­sen­ta­tion skills and pub­licly show­case their projects. To incor­po­rate diverse per­spec­tives, stu­dents from dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines are invited to apply and, in their appli­ca­tion, argue how they could con­tribute to the course and the co-construction of team projects.

Below are a few stu­dent quotes from the SIAR 2019 offering:

• The most unique and engag­ing semes­ter I’ve had in my uni­ver­sity career so far
• A once in a life­time oppor­tu­nity to learn new skills, make new friends, and work with tech­nol­ogy for the greater good
• The most inten­sive course at SFU where stu­dents get hands on expe­ri­ence with cut­ting edge technology
• I actu­ally know everybody’s name 
• It’s a unique expe­ri­ence where the class actu­ally feels like a community
• The most inten­sive course at SFU where stu­dents get hands on expe­ri­ence with cut­ting edge technology

Below is a first pre­sen­ta­tion from Bernhard about the instruc­tional ideas behind the Semester in Alternate Realities, from his pre­sen­ta­tion on “Navigating the Dance of Power: Agency, Authenticity, and the Classroom” pre­sented at Simon Fraser University’s Teaching Innovation Lab: Students as Partners in Teaching and Learning, on 29 August 2023. This talk covers some reflec­tions, insights and teach­ing approaches from the Semester in Alternate Realities class he taught in 2019 and 2023

more recently Bernhard also pre­sented at the SFU-SIAT research col­lo­quium on Sept 20, 2023, on“Beyond Plagiarism Concerns: ChatGPT as Your Personal Coach in Education? Exploring the trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial of AI in edu­ca­tion”. This talk covers insights and reflec­tions on how stu­dents in his Semester in Alternate Realities project-based VR course used ChatGPT, dis­cussing the poten­tial and chal­lenges of GenAI in higher edu­ca­tion:

A reflection on SIAR 2023: Immersive Transformations in Project-Based Learning: Fostering Lifelong Learning and Empowerment through Virtual Reality and Ungrading Pedagogy

Simon Fraser University’s Semester in Alternate Realities (SIAR), an upper-level inten­sive course cross-listed for grad­u­ate stu­dents, is a ground-breaking endeavor in immer­sive learn­ing. By har­ness­ing Virtual Reality (VR) tech­nol­ogy, project-based learn­ing, and a rad­i­cal ungrad­ing approach, the course pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive expe­ri­ence that blends inno­v­a­tive instruc­tional method­olo­gies, tech­no­log­i­cal prowess, and the audac­ity to chal­lenge tra­di­tional grad­ing sys­tems. This mul­ti­fac­eted design lays the foun­da­tion for the com­plex, yet trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney that defines the SIAR course experience.

Central to our design approach for SIAR was the use of trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence design frame­works. While these frame­works were employed to help stu­dents design more impact­ful VR expe­ri­ences, they also served as a blue­print for cre­at­ing a mean­ing­ful and trans­for­ma­tive learn­ing envi­ron­ment. The objec­tive was not only to design spe­cific moments in the class­room that might leave a last­ing impact on stu­dents includ­ing deep learn­ing, but also to poten­tially trig­ger per­sonal and aca­d­e­mic trans­for­ma­tions. The major assess­ment was a team VR project (4 people/team) that pro­vided the over­ar­ch­ing learn­ing and teach­ing con­text in this course.

This vision mate­ri­al­ized in the agile learn­ing envi­ron­ment we cre­ated, fol­low­ing a sprint frame­work with weekly feed­back mile­stones. This setup com­pelled stu­dents to quickly adapt to new tech­nolo­gies, for­mu­late strate­gies, present and user-test a min­i­mal viable pro­to­type (MVP) each week, and inte­grate user feed­back and self/team-reflection insights into their projects and team man­age­ment. As a result, stu­dents designed four dis­tinct VR projects, each pro­vid­ing a unique, mean­ing­ful VR expe­ri­ence as evi­denced in the public VR show­case. For instance, “In Bloom” is a VR puzzle game devel­oped by a stu­dent team where play­ers col­lab­o­rate with a mys­ti­cal crea­ture to reju­ve­nate a des­o­late city, encap­su­lat­ing our course’s empha­sis on build­ing a deeper con­nec­tion between the user and their environment.

Reflecting on the trans­for­ma­tive moments expe­ri­enced in the course or while under­tak­ing the team project, one stu­dent stated,

“I faced many chal­lenges and over­came them by using one skill: adapt­abil­ity. (…) Adaptation allowed me to work and learn at the same time and become a better pro­gram­mer and stu­dent. Learning this lesson will surely be impor­tant for my future, both in aca­d­e­mic and pro­fes­sional careers.” This tes­ta­ment under­scores the pro­found per­sonal and aca­d­e­mic growth facil­i­tated by the team project require­ments, our agile learn­ing frame­work, and the trans­for­ma­tive design of the SIAR course (which includes the upgrad­ing approach).

Another aspect of our trans­for­ma­tive course design was fos­ter­ing reflec­tive dis­cus­sions through­out the course. These dis­cus­sions enabled stu­dents to col­lab­o­ra­tively address real-world issues through VR, which was exem­pli­fied in “EcoSpectra”, which took imm­er­sants on a jour­ney in a dystopian future museum, empha­siz­ing the grim con­se­quences of neglect­ing envi­ron­men­tal preservation.

We designed SIAR with the aim of pro­vid­ing a com­pas­sion­ate and nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment, which is evi­denced through stu­dents’ expe­ri­ences. By inte­grat­ing connection-before-content and team/community build­ing activ­i­ties with bi-weekly indi­vid­ual and team coach­ing ses­sions and our ungrad­ing approach, we encour­age a mind­set of cre­ative explo­ration and com­pas­sion­ate under­stand­ing, pro­mot­ing a sense of com­mu­nity and con­nec­tion, and fos­ter­ing a cli­mate where stu­dents feel com­fort­able taking risks. A student’s reflec­tion encap­su­lates this trans­for­ma­tive impact, stat­ing “the spe­cial thing about this class is that we get to make mis­takes and we’re kind of not afraid to make those mis­takes and we try things that we usu­ally don’t try”.

The power of this com­mu­nal spirit is fur­ther under­lined by another student’s account of the team build­ing activ­ity that they were asked to design as part of SIAR, which marked a sig­nif­i­cant turn­ing point in their project: “The day we went pic­nick­ing for team bond­ing is the day our ini­tial direc­tion was shut down, which is also the day we came up with the idea for EcoSpectra. The orig­i­nally stress­ful day sur­pris­ingly turned out to be my most mem­o­rable day of the term. The moment we pulled out a blan­ket from nowhere, sat down at Burnaby Mountain Park having a picnic that none of us planned, while writ­ing VRDD on a laptop that’s con­nected to somebody’s hotspot, and being bitten by mos­quito as the sun went down, was the moment that I real­ize I won’t regret work­ing with the people in my team.”

Students had the lib­erty to explore VR’s expan­sive poten­tial, and they designed emo­tion­ally res­o­nant expe­ri­ences that offered novel per­spec­tives unat­tain­able in the phys­i­cal world. For exam­ple, “Last Call to Elysium” pre­sented a cau­tion­ary sci-fi nar­ra­tive about our poten­tial future if human­ity fails to address the press­ing cli­mate crisis. Conversely, “Honourable Harvest” guided users on a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery and kin­ship with sacred med­i­cines and plant rel­a­tives, embody­ing Indigenous teachings.

The impact of in-class activ­i­ties guided by trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence design frame­works was evi­dent when one stu­dent said, “As a stu­dent with con­stant design prac­tices in visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I tend to fixate on what­ever the eyes per­ceive which usu­ally makes me ignore the power of words, voice, and sounds. Bernhard men­tioned that telling a story can be one of the oldest ways of immer­sion. During the ses­sion of Wizard-of-Ozing the poten­tial ending for our project, espe­cially after lis­ten­ing to a fellow student’s inner voice nar­ra­tion, I had an even more firm stand on the power of sto­ry­telling and desire to uti­lize it for future design prac­tices.” This reflects the deep-seated par­a­digm shifts cat­alyzed by the course, high­light­ing its role as a poten­tially trans­for­ma­tive edu­ca­tional model.

Integral to the SIAR expe­ri­ence is cul­ti­vat­ing a sense of own­er­ship and auton­omy, instill­ing a pas­sion that pro­pels stu­dents to steer their own learn­ing jour­neys sup­ported by reg­u­lar men­tor­ing and coach­ing from the instruc­tional team. This approach enables stu­dents to take the reins of their projects, fos­ter­ing a sense of pride, own­er­ship, and per­sonal invest­ment in their work. They con­duct research, per­form user test­ing, and syn­the­size data based on their under­stand­ing, fos­ter­ing cru­cial self-management skills. The impact of this self-guided approach is cap­tured elo­quently in a student’s reflec­tion: “One of the most sig­nif­i­cant skills I acquired through­out this class was self-management…I took the ini­tia­tive to con­duct research, per­form user test­ing, and syn­the­size data not solely because they were assigned, but because I under­stood their inher­ent neces­sity based on my knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence.” This stu­dent tes­ti­mony under­scores the pro­found per­sonal and aca­d­e­mic growth sparked by the SIAR course’s student-driven approach to learning.

In con­clu­sion, SIAR is more than a course; it’s a trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney towards life­long learn­ing. It shapes edu­ca­tion in such a way that it not only inspires stu­dents to learn, create, and grow but also chal­lenges and equips them to nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of our rapidly evolv­ing soci­ety. Through the shared expe­ri­ences and trans­for­ma­tive moments of our stu­dents, we believe in the power of SIAR to rede­fine immer­sive learn­ing in a sup­port­ive, inno­v­a­tive, and engag­ing environment.

Semester in Alternate Realities: Showcase on Wednesday June 14 2023

On Wednesday June 14 2023, four stu­dent teams show­cased their immer­sive Virtual Reality projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from ca 12:30 — 4:30pm. (see also Facebook event page)

Details about the VR Projects:

In Bloom

Immerse yourself in a realm of captivating beauty and journey alongside a mystical creature as you unravel the mysteries of the forgotten planet, each step guiding you towards a shared goal: Restoring Nature.

Website

Reconnect with nature, and restore life to a desolate city.

 

Razor: A VR puzzle game in which the player builds a bond with a magical wild animal, as they work together to restore nature in a desolate city.

Immerse your­self in a realm of cap­ti­vat­ing beauty and jour­ney along­side a mys­ti­cal crea­ture as you unravel the mys­ter­ies of the for­got­ten planet, each step guid­ing you towards a shared goal: Restoring nature’s beauty to the world. Through our VR expe­ri­ence we hope to help users build a deeper con­nec­tion between them­selves and their environment.

In Bloom, is a puzzle based game in which the user coop­er­ates along­side a myth­i­cal crea­ture and aids them to unravel the mys­ter­ies of the ruined for­got­ten planet, each step guid­ing to the goal of restor­ing nature’s beauty to the world. Through our VR expe­ri­ence we hope to help users build a deeper con­nec­tion between them­selves and their environment.

 

Project video trailer:

Full project video:

 

EcoSpectra

Where the future meets the past

Website

Brace yourself for a mind-bending journey through history in the EcoSpectra museum.

Razor: An educational and informative immersive experience that calls to action for environmental protection.

EcoSpectra is an immer­sive VR expe­ri­ence in which the user finds them­selves in a museum with arti­facts that you would see in any museum, but as they walk they start to see things that would be too ordi­nary to see in a museum today. This sus­pen­sion leads to a twist where they find out they are a robot in a dystopian future where humans have led their species to an extinc­tion. The pur­pose of this VR expe­ri­ence is to use the shock effect to make the user feel the pos­si­ble future. The goal is to raise envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness and high­light the con­se­quences of not pre­serv­ing the Earth.

Project video trailer:

Full project video:

 

Honourable Harvest

Re-igniting & restoring kinship with the land.

Website

Through this experience, the immersant is transformed by Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, through gifting protocols and reciprocity, respect, and reverence for human and non-human kinship.

Razor: Using Indigenous teachings, Honourable Harvest guides users on a four-fold journey of discovery and kinship with sacred medicines and our plant relatives.

Honourable Harvest is an expe­ri­ence that allows users to travel east-south-west-and north across time, to build con­nec­tion to, and to gather 4 sacred med­i­cines and their sto­ries as relatives/kin, as they pre­pare for smudg­ing. at a meet­ing, event, or cer­e­mony. Through this expe­ri­ence, the imm­er­sant learns more about Indigenous ways of know­ing, being and doing, and will expe­ri­ence the essence of human and non-human kin­ship relations.

Project video trailer:

Full project video:

 

Last Call to Elysium

A civilization’s echo, Humanity's future

Website

Venture into the vast cosmos, decipher alien ruins, and unlock the cautionary tales of civilizations past in 'Last Call to Elysium', a narrative journey through potential futures shaped by the climate crisis.

Razor: A sci-fi environmental storytelling narrative that explores planets filled with alien ruins; a hopeful, yet cautionary tale of potential futures humanity may face should it not address the current climate crisis.

Last Call to Elysium is a sci-fi explo­ration expe­ri­ence set in a dis­tant future where Earth has become inhab­it­able. Participants will take on the role of an astro­con­duc­tor seek­ing to find a new home for human­ity. Guided by an advanced nav­i­ga­tion system which tar­gets poten­tial “goldilocks plan­ets”, they will travel through worm­holes on their space­train. Once they have landed on a planet, par­tic­i­pants may explore the envi­ron­ments, and the ruins of past alien civ­i­liza­tions. Through their explo­ration, par­tic­i­pants will be able to uncover the sto­ries of these civ­i­liza­tions, and what led to their ulti­mate demise. By uncov­er­ing their pasts, par­tic­i­pants will be able to learn from the mis­takes of these alien civ­i­liza­tions, and gain a new­found appre­ci­a­tion for Earth.

Project video trailer:

Full project video:

 

Project Posters

Photos from 2023 SIAR showcase

Most recent offering: Summer intersession 2023

Bernhard will be offer­ing an inten­sive (6 week + 1 week for final show­case) 6-credit ver­sion of the Semester in Alternate Realities in Summer (inter­s­es­sion) 2023, under the course num­bers IAT 480 or 481, on the SFU Surrey Campus (next to the Skytrain Surrey Central sta­tion), see https://www.sfu.ca/siat/programs/undergraduate/current-students/semester-in-alternate-realities.html for more details.

 

Who can apply

Upper-level under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents with a keen inter­est in address­ing real-world prob­lems through design­ing alter­nate real­i­ties expe­ri­ences. Students are expected to be fear­less in their explo­ration, adop­tion and exper­i­men­ta­tion of immer­sive tech­nolo­gies, and open to and inter­ested in explor­ing new ideas, con­cepts and per­spec­tives in an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary set­ting. Come pre­pared to work col­lab­o­ra­tively with others.

Note: the summer inter­s­es­sion 2023 goes from Monday, May 8, 2023 — Monday, June 19, plus about an extra week for the final show­case (during the exam period). In-person class times will (most likely) be Tue/Wed/Th/Fr from 12:30 — 4:20pm, with an open lab ses­sion after­wards until 6:20pm in SFU Surrey’s VR com­puter lab (SRYC 3050). You’ll likely need Mondays and part of the other morn­ings for prepar­ing things. Hence we advise that you should not take on any other courses or major jobs while being in this course.

Graduate stu­dents will have addi­tional require­ments, and will need to write a schol­arly paper (e.g., inves­ti­gat­ing their VR project/experience) and submit it by (details/deadlines to be final­ized, most likely) July 6^th, and present it orally on July 10^th (most likely in an in-person session).

Please read through and fill out the appli­ca­tion form in case you’re inter­ested in join­ing the course, which is open to stu­dents with the nec­es­sary back­ground in VR, both for SIAT stu­dents and stu­dents from other depart­ments of SFU or UBC.

Feel free to con­tact Naomi (SIAT under­grad advi­sor) at siat_advising@sfu.ca  or Bernhard (instruc­tor) at ber1@sfu.ca if inter­ested in join­ing (or TA’ing) for this course.

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Details on prior course offering in Spring 2019

In a joint endeavor, Bernhard Riecke & Patrick Pennefather have designed and in the Spring 2019 semes­ter jointly taught a brand-new 15-credit immer­sive course enti­tled “Semester in Alternate Realities” (DIAL 390W, 391W, 392W D200) aimed at taking expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing to the next level. Special thanks to our amaz­ing edu­ca­tional con­sul­tant Barb Berry for her sup­port in design­ing this course, and con­tribut­ing to the teach­ing and learn­ing grant and final report about this course (which you can find here)!

In this project-based course, par­tic­i­pants will be chal­lenged to develop solu­tions using tech­nolo­gies such as VR (e.g., Oculus Go/Rift, HTC Vive) and immer­sive multi-modal mixed real­ity instal­la­tions. In addi­tion to focus­ing on the co-construction of dig­i­tal pro­to­types afford­ing mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences in “alter­nate real­i­ties”, our objec­tive is to stim­u­late doc­u­mented reflec­tion and dis­cus­sion through­out the process. Participants can expect to work col­lab­o­ra­tively, be matched accord­ing to the skills they bring, and be pro­vided time and resources to learn new tech­niques and approaches, soft– and hard skills, and processes to con­duct user research. Participants will get the oppor­tu­nity to reflect on future tech­nolo­gies and their poten­tial impact on the world, and improve their pre­sen­ta­tion skills and pub­licly show­case their projects at three show­cases through­out the semes­ter. To incor­po­rate diverse per­spec­tives, stu­dents from dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines were invited to apply and, in their appli­ca­tion, argue how they could con­tribute to the course and the co-construction of team projects. 18 stu­dents from dif­fer­ent depart­ments were selected.

This semester’s design chal­lenge is “cre­at­ing for good”: Use alter­nate real­i­ties tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies, guid­ing the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works, and appro­pri­ate processes, project man­age­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion approaches to iter­a­tively ideate, design, pro­to­type, and eval­u­ate an inter­ac­tive alter­nate real­i­ties expe­ri­ence that affords mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences for the bet­ter­ment of human­ity and/or our planet.

There is increas­ing evi­dence that the immer­sive nature of VR makes it a pow­er­ful medium for “doing good,” and it is par­tic­u­larly well-suited for help­ing people develop com­pas­sion and empa­thy. In this course, we will explore the poten­tial of doing good using alter­nate real­i­ties (that are boom­ing around the world and par­tic­u­larly in Vancouver). This new course builds on our prior expe­ri­ence in teach­ing immer­sive envi­ron­ment courses and XR rapid pro­to­typ­ing, doing joint VR4Good projects, and orga­niz­ing a Siggraph Birds of a Feather ses­sion on VR/MR/AR 4 Good: Creating with a Purpose.

 

SIAR course overview/intro from 2019:

 

 

Course videos

SIAR course video:

Here’s a video cre­ated  by our SIAR stu­dents to describe the over­all course:

IAT344 video

thanks to the IAT344 video team Ivy Run Zhao, Lynn Minxuan Wu, and Guanlin Liang and their instruc­tor Susan Clements-Vivian for cre­at­ing this video! It covers VR projects from our first Epic and Showcase 1 on February 1^st 2019.

Media Coverage

Our Semester in Alternate Realities was chosen as one of two “Cool Courses” by MacLean https://www.macleans.ca/schools/simon-fraser-university/

Semester in Alternate Realities stu­dents teach people to walk a mile in some­one else’s shoes

SIAT pro­fes­sors adjust teach­ing style for SFU’s ground-breaking Semester in Alternate Realities

Immersive class­room expe­ri­ence fos­ters team­work in ground-breaking Semester in Alternate Realities

Emerging Media BC Community of Practice meet­ing: VR4Good

SFU stu­dents use vir­tual real­ity to address real-world problems

From inter­view of SIAT stu­dent Elene Wanner

What was the high­light of your under­grad­u­ate career or your best learn­ing experience?

“The high­light of my SFU career was an inten­sive 15 credit course called a Semester in Alternate Realities (SiAR). The course had about 25 stu­dents from var­i­ous degree pro­grams and we spent Monday to Friday moti­vat­ing each other and rapidly pro­to­typ­ing vir­tual real­ity expe­ri­ences. I thought I was in way over my head when I was accepted into the course, but I was able to explore and excel in var­i­ous roles I hadn’t been exposed to pre­vi­ously includ­ing project man­ager, art direc­tor, scrum master, and so much more. Following this course, I con­stantly uti­lized my agile devel­op­ment, design and team man­age­ment skills to push my school projects fur­ther and this made a big dif­fer­ence when I landed my first co-op job.”

Designing positive transformative experiences using VR/MR: From research to classrooms

May 20, 2019, Bernhard Riecke gave a Keynote pre­sen­ta­tion on “Designing pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences using vir­tual and mixed real­ity: From research to class­rooms” at the “Symposium on Transformative Media: Designing Digital Experiences for Positive Change” in Milano, Italy. In the second half of the talk he presents some exam­ples and find­ings from the Semester in Alternate Realities course, here’s a video (sorry for the record­ing qual­ity, we had to switch com­put­ers so could not use screen recording).

Want to try it out? VR projects for download

As we had tasked our stu­dents to engage with real-world prob­lems by asking them to design “inter­ac­tive alter­nate real­i­ties expe­ri­ence that affords mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences for the bet­ter­ment of human­ity and/or our planet” there was con­sid­er­able inter­est from the public, and we decided to pub­lish the VR expe­ri­ences online (at itch.io, after some more iter­a­tive improve­ments) free to use for every­body to fur­ther increase com­mu­nity out­reach and involvement.

Siege: https://redfoxgamedev.itch.io/siar-siege

VR Demos at Sustainable Energy and Engineering Building Opening Ceremony

On 25 April 2019 the Semester in Alternate Realities team will present 2 VR4Good projects that directly address sus­tain­abil­ity: Aquatica and Rising Waters.

 

Emerging Media BC Community of Practice  open Event on Friday April 12th 2019: Presentations & VR demos

The April 2019 meet­ing (details and RSVP here) will be hosted at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) at the SFU Surrey campus. The theme of this meet­ing is “VR 4Good”, based on the 4Good projects of the stu­dents at SIAR, with a focus on the ben­e­fits of facil­i­tat­ing such VR projects. Several of the VR4Good projects that were made during the Semester in Alternate Realities inten­sive (15 credit) course on the SFU Surrey campus will be presented.

These works were cre­ated by stu­dents from dif­fer­ent SFU depart­ments who joined our Semester in Alternate Realities. The works are part of an emerg­ing field of devel­op­ment and research that use VR and other emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to increase aware­ness and be a cat­a­lyst for improv­ing our world. These projects are the cul­mi­na­tion of 14 weeks of an intense, iter­a­tive, agile, reflec­tive and adap­tive teach­ing and learn­ing process. Four dis­tinct yet inter­con­nected “for good” Virtual Reality expe­ri­ences focused on themes related to improv­ing the social and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tion, by not only draw­ing aware­ness to issues in the world that require our atten­tion, but also pro­vid­ing unique first-person expe­ri­ences that we could not have with­out immer­sive technology.

Here’s a video of the pre­sen­ta­tions, start­ing with the stu­dent presentations:

start­ing with Bernhard and Patrick intro­duc­ing the Semester in Alternate Realities:

and here is the part of the pre­sen­ta­tion where Bernhard and Patrick explain how they designed the “Semester in Alternate Realities” course and the impor­tant role that inte­grat­ing stu­dent feed­back on a reg­u­lar (often daily) basis played.

Third and Final Showcase: Thursday April 4th 2019

We’ll have our third and final Student Virtual Reality Showcase on Thursday Aprtil 4^th ‚ from ca 12pm noon — 5:30pm, on the SFU Surrey Campus Mezzanine, where our  18 stu­dents from dif­fer­ent SFU depart­ments will present their final projects. This time they all worked together in one Jazzile HiveMind ensem­ble instead of fixed teams to design this final experience.

 

Video trailer:

Projects and videos

Narrow Walls - You’re worth it, save your mind!

Narrow Walls is a VR expe­ri­ence that sit­u­ates imm­er­sants into the role of war sur­vivors trying to escape real­ity through trans­fer­ring their con­scious­ness into the vir­tual world. In the vir­tual world, the imm­er­sants learn about the back­ground sto­ries and moti­va­tions of other sur­vivors who are in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. At the end of the expe­ri­ence, the imm­er­sants dis­cover a sur­pris­ing ending that reveals what the future holds for them.

Goal: Our intended goal for the imm­er­sant is to empathize with the risks that some refugees take to grant them­selves or their family a better life. It is easy to gen­er­al­ize migrat­ing refugees and come up with a pre­con­ceived expec­ta­tion of each person that con­sid­ers them­selves as such, but by encom­pass­ing that group of refugees as indi­vid­u­als that come from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and life expe­ri­ences, we will make cap­ti­vat­ing char­ac­ters. We want users to rec­og­nize these people as human beings with a tan­gi­ble his­tory, and that every­one can become a refugee even in devel­oped coun­tries.
Engaging with the NPCs in the world com­bined with the pre and post expe­ri­ences will be what dif­fer­en­ti­ates our expe­ri­ence from other expe­ri­ences that tell the refugee expe­ri­ence. There are many VR expe­ri­ence that tells sto­ries of refugees, but our expe­ri­ence will allow for more embod­ied expe­ri­ence for the user.

Core user expe­ri­ence:  Narrow Walls is a nerve-wracking VR expe­ri­ence in which the users go through a har­row­ing exodus to an uncer­tain future while dis­cov­er­ing about the tragic back­grounds of the people around them. The users will be sit­u­ated in a con­fined space that is per­me­ated by dark­ness where occa­sional flick­ers of light could be vis­i­ble.  A strong sense of uncer­tainty and fear would be con­veyed to the users through the visual sym­bols. By plac­ing the users in a vir­tual space where every­thing is in the dark and almost unper­ceiv­able, they are guided to feel the sense of uncer­tainty and fear that a refugee might feel on their jour­ney to flee to a for­eign coun­try. The design of the NPCs in the vir­tual envi­ron­ment also helps to por­tray the metaphors of “fleet­ing mem­o­ries” and “incom­pre­hen­si­bil­ity of human future” as they are con­stantly glow­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing, never fully visible.

Siege - Defend the mind palace

Welcome to the mind palace, a place in your mind you can go to in order to work through your per­sonal trou­bles and issues. In the mind palace you will encounter your inner voice who will give you a tour. However, when a com­mo­tion is heard out­side the tour is inter­rupted in order to go inves­ti­gate. From the top of the castle tower, it becomes appar­ent that the castle is being bom­barded with paper air­planes. Who is throw­ing these planes, and what do they want?

Goal:  The goal of the project is to get the user to under­stand the impor­tance of being con­nected to people, the sig­nif­i­cance of the com­mu­nity in their life, and their trust in those who sur­round them. Loneliness is a huge prob­lem for many mil­len­ni­als and most of them don’t know how to tackle this prob­lem. Our project is unique because the topic of lone­li­ness and con­nec­tion is not often explored in VR. We also use gam­i­fi­ca­tion to help users under­stand the topic. Siege may be con­sid­ered as “for good” because it addresses an impor­tant topic of rely­ing on others and how as a soci­ety we need to be con­nected to each other.

Core user expe­ri­ence:  The core user expe­ri­ence of the project is to place the user in the posi­tion of being “attacked” by mes­sages from their friends. The castle siege itself rep­re­sents shut­ting one­self off from friends who are reach­ing out. The user is the one pro­tect­ing the castle and fight­ing with the attack­ers who throw paper air­planes at them. However, some of the paper air­planes con­tain mes­sages from the user’s friend, and through these mes­sages and responses from the user’s “inner voice” the nar­ra­tive is revealed. The desired shift that we want to achieve is to make the user real­ize that secur­ing the castle (i.e. per­sonal space and time) is some­times not good, espe­cially if we are ignor­ing those who are impor­tant to us in the process.

This emo­tional expe­ri­ence will assist in accom­plish­ing our goal of making users value their per­sonal rela­tion­ships more and make them want to reach out to indi­vid­u­als in their lives to improve those rela­tion­ships. When people under­stand the impor­tance of con­nect­ing with others, they will incor­po­rate this into their per­sonal rela­tion­ships and their community.

Aquatica - Sea the difference a cleaner ocean makes

Aquatica is a narrative-driven expe­ri­ence which brings users to a future job ori­en­ta­tion where they will be asked to elim­i­nate ocean life as bacteria-free plas­tic is con­sid­ered as the only pos­i­tive mate­r­ial to the ocean. In the ocean, users will see a vari­ety of ocean crea­tures as well as dif­fer­ent types of aes­thetic plas­tic objects. Following the voice, users will help cleans­ing the ocean by elim­i­nat­ing ocean crea­tures such as sea cucum­bers, plas­tic bag jel­ly­fish, bleached corals, ugly fish, and a turtle. By pre­sent­ing users with an illu­sion of a per­fect futur­is­tic ocean which is opposed to cur­rent con­cep­tion, users will real­ize how plas­tic usage in daily life can neg­a­tively affect the ocean and the under­sea creatures.

Goal:  What makes Aquatica unique is that it is an under­wa­ter expe­ri­ence that takes place in a dystopian future where sea life has been driven to extinc­tion by humans on pur­pose. The goal of the project is to raise aware­ness that if we do not con­trol our usage of plas­tic and make people care about the ocean, then in the future, we may not have any left. We achieved this through sen­sory and imag­i­na­tive immer­sion, in addi­tion to trying to influ­ence the user to make the uneth­i­cal choice.

Core user expe­ri­ence:  The core user expe­ri­ence of Aquatica involves encour­ag­ing the user to elim­i­nate under­wa­ter crea­tures in a world where plas­tic is seen as clean and beau­ti­ful. By grad­u­ally ramp­ing up the stakes, we hope users will real­ize the slip­pery slope oceans microplas­tics and under­sea pol­lu­tion can be.

Fit4You - Your Fitness, Personalized

(Real slogan: You don’t know your­self the way we do)

FIT4U is a vir­tual real­ity expe­ri­ence in which users are asked to work­out with a vir­tual yoga instruc­tor. Players fill in a form regard­ing their body and lifestyle infor­ma­tion and before begin­ning their work­out ses­sion. Once the expe­ri­ence is near­ing com­ple­tion, the sim­u­la­tion is revealed to be what it truly is; a way to farm their data. This is done to expose users to the “loose­ness” of cyber­se­cu­rity, and how it can be easily manip­u­lated to aid cyber-criminals in access­ing user data and com­pa­nies in exploit­ing their data.

Goal:  FIT4U intends to raise aware­ness of cyber­se­cu­rity through a VR expe­ri­ence where the user is tricked into shar­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion. The set­ting for the expe­ri­ence is a relax­ing and almost med­i­ta­tive envi­ron­ment in order to make the users feel more at ease. The major dif­fer­en­tia­tor of FIT4U is that it takes the issue of cyber­se­cu­rity to a per­sonal level, unlike sim­i­lar VR expe­ri­ences that gamify the issue. FIT4U closes this gap by making the user a victim of fic­tional cyber­crime where their real per­sonal infor­ma­tion is accessed by a hacker. Such an effect should create a shift in the user’s per­cep­tion of the prob­lem and help them real­ize that they need to be more care­ful about the infor­ma­tion they share.

Core user expe­ri­ence: Shift. We want to trick the user into giving away infor­ma­tion, so we can show how care­less they are with it. We want users to feel relaxed enough so they become more manip­u­lat­able and are more will­ing to give away their data. We would like users to feel med­i­ta­tive and com­fort­able as they go through the yoga work­out process then shocked when they dis­cover that all their infor­ma­tion was accessed by some­one else after the fic­tional data breach. The tran­si­tion from com­fort to shock is cru­cial since it removes the abstract gap between the user shar­ing their per­sonal infor­ma­tion and some­one else taking advan­tage of it. We want FIT4U to be an edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence and we believe our expe­ri­ence trig­gers addi­tional think­ing process and con­scious shift in the users’ mind­set towards a more aware lifestyle.

https://youtu.be/4JyJ1L_mmSs

Pictures from our third and final showcase

VR demo at: "How to Stay Afloat: Tackling the Oceans & Climate Change"

SIAR stu­dents pre­sented their course VR project during the “Let’s talk Climate Change & the Oceans” event on the Burnaby campus which had the topic of “How to Stay Afloat: Tackling the Oceans & Climate Change”

 

Second Showcase: Fr March 8th 2019

We’ll have our second Student Virtual Reality Showcase on Friday March 8^th, from ca 12pm noon - 4:30pm, on the SFU Surrey Campus Mezzanine, where our  18 stu­dents from dif­fer­ent SFU depart­ments cre­ated new teams and designed new projects to show­case. See our Facebook event page for first pic­tures of the show­case, more will follow soon.

 

Fit4U: Your Fitness, Personalized

(Real slogan: You don’t know your­self the way we do)

FIT4U is a vir­tual real­ity expe­ri­ence in which users are asked to work­out with a real coach. Players fill the form regard­ing their body and lifestyle infor­ma­tion and begin their work­out ses­sion. Once the expe­ri­ence is near­ing com­ple­tion, the sim­u­la­tion is revealed to be what it truly is; a way to farm their data. This is done to expose users to the “loose­ness” of cyber­se­cu­rity, and how it can be easily manip­u­lated to aid cyber-criminals in access­ing user data and com­pa­nies in exploit­ing their data.

Goal:  FIT4U intends to raise aware­ness on cyber­se­cu­rity issue using VR expe­ri­ence where the user is tricked into shar­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion in the relax­ing and almost med­i­ta­tive envi­ron­ment, anal­o­gous to many cases in the real world. The major dif­fer­en­tia­tor is that FIT4U takes issue of a cyber­se­cu­rity onto a per­sonal level, unlike many projects out there since sim­i­lar VR expe­ri­ences focus on game-like feel which detracts from the real prob­lem. FIT4U closes this gap by making the user a victim of fic­tional cyber crime where their real per­sonal infor­ma­tion is accessed by a hacker. Such an effect should make a shift in user’s per­cep­tion on a prob­lem and help them real­ize that they need to be more care­ful about the infor­ma­tion they share.

Core user expe­ri­ence:   We want to trick the user into giving away infor­ma­tion, so we can show how care­less they are with it. We want users to feel relaxed enough so they become more manip­u­la­ble and are more will­ing to give away their data. We would like users to feel med­i­ta­tive and com­fort­able as they go through the yoga work­out process and shocked as soon as they dis­cover that all their infor­ma­tion entered within the soft­ware as well as their infor­ma­tion from the Web was accessed by some­one else after the fic­tional data breach. Transition from com­fort to shock is cru­cial since it removes the abstract gap between the user shar­ing their per­sonal infor­ma­tion and some­one else taking advan­tage of it. We want FIT4U to be an edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence and we believe our expe­ri­ence trig­gers addi­tional think­ing process and con­scious shift in the users’ mind­set towards a more aware lifestyle.

CyberPsych Inc.: The prototype of your dreams