Fall 2021 offering (in-person)
Impact: Using immersive experience design to contribute to meaningful solutions to real-world challenges. That is: what is a topic that you (and your team) care very deeply about that would help create a better world? A topic you care about so deeply about that it might be worth making a purposeful/transformative immersive VR experience out of it?
Impact: VR4Good IAT 445 Project showcase, Thursday, Dec 2nd, from 2 - 6:30pm
on Thursday, Dec 2nd, from 2–6:30pm, the students from my course on “immersive environments” (IAT 445) will be presenting their final VR projects, featuring video trailers for each projects, and team interviews with the VR designers.
The second part (Starting at 4:30) will be live-streamed on Zoom and accessible to everyone with an internet connection
Schedule:
in-person VR showcase: 14:00 - 16:30 (=2-4:30pm)
on the SFU Surrey campus, in room 3140. (directions)
Live-streamed online showcase: 16:30 - 18:30 (=4:30 - 6:30pm): Zoom link
- 16:30pm: Introductions from Instructor and TA, overview of the course and the projects in the showcase
- 16:40 — 18:20: live VR project showcase & team interview. Moderated VR showcases and interviews with the VR designers
- Team 1–1 16:40
- Team 1–2 16:55
- Team 1–3 17:10
- Team 1–4 17:25
< potential short break > - Team 2–1 17:40
- Team 2–2 17:55
- Team 2–3 18:10
- 18:25: Closing: Final Q&A, audience questions, closing
if you missed the showcase, here’s a recording:
Details about the VR Projects:
Amaoto
Technically, like, everything is a drum when you think about it
Razor: Immerse yourself in the sound-driven experience of being alone on a rainy day, combining the percussive capabilities of pots and pans with the impact of droplets falling from the sky– all without getting wet.
By method of tactile, satisfying interactions with household objects re-contextualized to catch raindrops, Amaoto guides immersants through a meditative, self-paced exploration of a rainy environment. In doing so, it not only hopes to provide a calming escape, but encourages immersants to find simple joys or a sense of peace within day-to-day interactions which they may not have paid close attention to previously.
Trailer:
project video:
Invisible War
Be careful, be prepared for next war
Razor: The user acts as a doctor to learn about The knowledge and impact of COVID-19, and to vaccinate people against COVID-19
World of Virus is an immersive experience that puts the player in the shoes of a virus infecting the human body. Experience the damage COVID-19 can cause from a first person view and learn about human anatomy along the way.
Trailer:
project video:
Habitual Hero
A little good goes a long way
Razor: Habitual Hero is an immersive VR experience intended to teach users the simplicity of being compassionate and helpful towards others
Habitual Hero is a challenge-based VR experience that places the user into a test to see how they handle the problems in front of them. Users are given the opportunity to become a superhero in the pre-vr experience and must demonstrate they are a proper fit by completing a series of tasks inside the virtual world. In the end, the user discovers there is no serum to give them powers and that being a hero is helping others and being compassionate.
Trailer:
project video:
A Waste of Space
Space may be endless, but our pollution shouldn’t be...
Razor: A satirical VR experience that addresses the carelessness of large corporate companies and their methods of "removing" space debris, indicating a need for a proper mitigation plan in the near future 
A Waste of Space is a satirical experience set in the near future, where large corporate companies launch rockets into space and have space stations established to clean up the leftover debris from these launches. During a routine debris cleanup, the player will be confronted with the shocking reality of the method in which these companies supposedly “clean” up all this waste.
Trailer:
project video:
Staying Afloat
The burdens that keep us are only pocket-deep
Razor: Pursuit of Happiness type game set in Canada 
Taking care of a family has never been an easy task, but just imagine what happens when you lose your job. Staying Afloat takes its users through a rather unlucky tale of financial burden and how to get oneself and their family back on their feet. Travel the city, chat with others, and do what you need to do to prevent your family from suffering.
Trailer:
project video:
Beyond the Ruins
It's no longer cruelty on paper
Razor: To create stories that make people reflect on the war and use the power of immersion to reduce people's prejudices 
The war correspondent is a role-playing game about the topic of anti-war. The game requires the player to play the role of a war correspondent. They will experience, observe the harm and cruelty of war to ordinary people and even soldiers from the perspective of a vulnerable person who has experienced war. In the game, the player needs to explore the battlefield and use virtual cameras to record the moment about the war, such as crying children, injured soldiers and the letters found in the dead soldiers’ pockets. Finally, the player will publish the report after a certain number of photos have been collected.
Trailer:
project video:
Lenny the Leaf
Trees feel too
Razor: Our goal is to raise awareness towards the health of forests in a playful way by utilizing emotional connection 
Lenny the Leaf revolves around a garbage man that discovers a sentient sapling named Lenny. Lenny is in a forest that has become a garbage dump and asks the garbage man for his assistance to restore the forest and save Lenny’s life. The garbage man must do so by completing tasks that Lenny asks of him.
Trailer:
project video:
Project Posters
Project Executive Summaries
Summer 2021 offering (online)
Impact: VR4Good IAT 445 Project showcase, Thursday June 24th at 10:30
on Thursday June 24th from 10:30 — 1pm, the students from my course on “immersive environments” (IAT 445) will be presenting their final projects, live-streamed on Twitch and accessible to everyone with an internet connection
Draft Schedule:
- 10:30am: Introductions from Instructor and TA, overview of the course and the projects in the showcase on Twitch
- 10:45 — 12pm noon: live VR project showcase & team interview. Moderated VR showcases and interviews with the VR designers (join us on Twitch)
- Ca noon – close: Open social. Your chance to chat, socialize, and talk to instructor/TA/students in our Wonder.me room.
Recording of live Twitch stream of Showcase:
Still in search of the water
The price of water
Razor: Experience the daily routine of a girl and the challenges that are faced by her due lack of access to clean water in the village of Ethiopia.
The Well is a sensory-based immersive VR experience that allows players to interact with game objects to unravel the story of a girl who lives in the village of Ethiopia. The player gets to experience the daily routine of the girl and the challenges that are faced by her everyday due to the lack of access to clean water; as well as understand the girl’s internal wishes and struggles. The visual and auditory immersion will mimic the real-life context of villages of Ethiopia to best represent the situation and the environment. In the end, the player will have a personalized experience of what a day of life would be like without access to clean water and draw compassion for the girls living in villages of some of the African countries.
Trailer:
Final project video:
Depresso Espresso: The Closing Shift
Minimum wage, maximum stress.
Razor: Taking on the persona of a new worker under the training of a senior employee, players learn basic tasks and interactions with customers that become more demanding and less empathetic, disregarding you and your co-worker’s growing levels of stress.
In Depresso Espresso, immersants are new hires at a coffee shop, experiencing their first closing shift with only one senior worker in the store. As they learn and perform various tasks around the store, immersants witness and experience mistreatment firsthand. Throughout the evening, customers become more demanding and less empathetic, leading immersants to gain awareness of the social underlyings of the dehumanization of low-wage workers.
Forest Restorers
Regrow the forest to nurture nature
Razor: Restore nature in environments ravaged by deforestation and desertification by understanding the importance of recycling and mindful consumption.
The Guardian of Nature needs your help restoring the forests on Earth. Experience the environmental impact of paper waste generated by human activity and the devastating effects of deforestation. Discover the importance of recycling and preventing excessive consumption.
Dolphin Bay: A Disturbing Beach Day
Be the solution to beach pollution
Razor: A different kind of “beach day” to collect beach litter in a modern world to keep the dolphins from consuming the litter.
The beach is full of sunshine, but sometimes full of garbage as well. Our participant will be placed in the shoes of a marine conservationist and experience what it’s like to be handling the garbage on the Dolphin Bay beach and saving marine wildlife from their issues. During the experience, the participant would be using his phone to communicate with his friend and receiving instructions. We would like the participants to engage themselves in an entirely different experience and help them create empathy for marine wildlife.
Wheel Life: A World With Limited Mobility
Wheel life, real struggles
Razor: Live your life to the fullest in an exciting and meaningful journey in a wheelchair, beyond your limits and obstacles.
Wheel Life is a wheelchair simulator where the immersant will get to experience common obstacles that the mobility impaired face on a regular basis. Each player will be given two tasks to do, such as completing a daily routine in their home and catching the bus. Once the first task is completed, the immersant will walk out of the house and onto a step which will teleport them to the bus scene.
Project Executive Summaries
Project posters:
Spring 2020 offering:
SHIFT: VR4Good Addressing Climate Change & Consumerism: IAT 445 Project showcase
[NOTE: due to the Covid-19 pandemic and social distancing measures this showcase will happen only online, below are links to the different projects and videos.]
On Tuesday April 14th 2020, the students from my course on “immersive environments” (IAT 445) will be presenting their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from about 11am — 3pm.
10 student teams will showcase their own immersive Virtual Reality projects that they developed in the popular game engine Unity3D and will present using Vive Cosmos, HTC Vive, or Oculus Quest head-mounted displays.
this semester’s design challenge for students is Shift: Using immersive experience design to contribute to meaningful solutions to real-world global challenges, specifically climate change or consumerism. Specifically, you will work in a team and use Unity and the guiding frameworks from this course (e.g., immersion, presence, user-centered systems design, agile development, transformative experience design etc.) to iteratively ideate, design, prototype, and evaluate an immersive interactive VR experience that takes advantage of the unique affordances and capabilities of immersive VR experiences. You will design for user experiences that have the potential to positively shift users’ cognition/perspective and/or behavior that would otherwise be impossible (or not as easily accessible) to most users. How can you provide interesting, inspiring, or meaningful VR experiences that create a positive change in the user? That is, what experiences can you provide in VR that are otherwise difficult, dangerous, or hard to experience? Instead of using VR as a diversion and ultimate sensory overload tool to wow people, think of ways you can use it for something more interesting, novel, exciting, and meaningful. How will you go beyond traditional digital experiences and take advantage of the potential of immersive technologies/VR?
Project posters:
Projects from Spring 2020
Phoenix's Sacrifice: It only takes a small spark to incinerate a forest, but just one seed to grow a new one.
Razor: Phoenix is an adventure game in which the player is a bird escaping a forest fire with a mission to preserve the ecosystem for its future inhabitants.
Our project is a screen based computer game which takes place in a forest where a kookaburra bird struggles to escape a fire caused by a patch of grass burned by the scorching sun, a warming climate possibly due to the long term effects of human industrial activities. The kookaburra must flee for its life and join the mass escape of wildlife while carrying along a seed to bring life to a new area.
The kookaburra flies through the forest and its wings become engulfed in flames and essentially becomes a phoenix. However, when the bird reaches its destination it dies from the damage caused by the forest fire. In the end, the player’s realization sets in that the bird was actually on fire the whole time and had not turned into a phoenix.
Eden: Homecoming: As the descendant of a dying species living in the sky, humanity and what remains of a desolate earth all depends on you.
Razor: A playful and thrilling science fiction fantasy adventure puzzle game in a post apocalyptic world with the goal of re-establishing life on earth.
On desolate Earth a windstorm wipes away all living beings destroying everything in its path. However, you find what appears to be the sole surviving plant left on Earth’s soil. After waking up from the storm, you find yourself on a land away far from Earth with the plant still intact. Everything around you appears broken and in tatters. You repair the damages caused by the storm to help create a sustainable environment for the plant. Earth is slowly being purified by the new plant life developed in the sky.
Air Pollution – The Silent Killer: Act now, create more solutions, not more pollution and change the future.
Razor: Let users feel air pollution directly and immersive by making them become one of the victims
The Silent Killer is a project that spans time and space. The project envisions the future world will be affected by severely polluted air. People need to wear masks to survive and living organisms die one after another. Spectators need to play the role of people who live in 2095 and go back to the year of 2020 to improve air pollution in 2095.
The goal of the project is to lead players to improve the environment of 2095 by doing challenges in 2020. In order to achieve this, players have to sort all the garbage in 2020 in a certain amount of time. And then they will get game reward points, they can use the reward points to redeem the saplings of the tree. Besides, the saplings can be planted in the year of 2095 to help players improve the air quality in 2095. Otherwise, unsorted garbage will be sent to the garbage burning factory and produce more polluted air; and the role may died because of serious air pollution.
Waste Stranded - The Space of Forgotten Echoes: The human in us is greater than what our hands can make.
Razor: Using the latest time-travelling technology to retrieve an ecological restoration machine from the near-future, you may be the only chance Earth has before humanity’s demise.
Waste Stranded: The Space of Forgotten Echoes is a speculative experience where one travels to the near-future, before the destruction of mankind, to retrieve an ecological restoration machine back to the present with the aid of an AI audio companion. As the player experiences being in the city of the near-future, they receive flash-forwards of the destruction of earth as result of a time-travel technology glitch. They are prompted to make decisions similar to that of our present in the near-future city as well, such as voting. It is a commentary on the present illusion of safety while our earth gradually dies, and emphasizes the fact that not even the most advanced technology of our future will be able to save us if we don’t take immediate actions regarding climate change.
Terrapoint: Collaboration For The Next Generation
Razor: An adventure VR game that takes place in post-apocalyptic Earth after the wreckage of climate change and man-induced destruction — teamwork, problem-solving, and eco-friendly technological innovations are key to preserving the planet.
Terrapoint is an adventure-puzzle VR game, where the player joins a team of specialists sent by the World Restoration Commission. Their mission is to set up an experimental terraforming machine called the Tree Pod to help bring the abandoned Terrapoint District back to habitable levels. The player is equipped with a special tether gun that provides the ability to control and manipulate machines/robots in the environments, which they will need to use for traversing the hostile game world. The player’s main objective is to utilize the tether gun to reach harmful technologies, so that they can extract their energy sources and use them for powering the Tree Pod. Gameplay combines freedom of exploration and puzzle-solving mechanics, with some inspiration from action games.
Rabbit Rescue: Why are we scared of the wild, when they are the ones who should be scared of us?
Razor: You are a lost rabbit in search of your family and a new home, all the while trying to weather the harsh elements caused by climate change.
Rabbit Rescue is an action packed survival experience where you must guide a lost bunny through floods, forest fires and more. Solve puzzles, conserve resources, and dodge the deadly elements to help your rabbit survive. Follow a dramatized version of a young rabbit losing his home and family to climate change and help him find his way back.
rE-collect: Wield the technology of the future to discover where it ends up today
Razor: A scavenger hunt framed as an item collection quest with Minecraft-like mining in VR but with electronics and a linear narrative, set within the context of e-waste’s effect on the environmen
It is a VR experience where participants mine and collect materials from e-waste while they rid an environment of toxicity, so that they can perform actions that allow them to have further environmental considerations for how they personally dispose and acquire electronics.
Garbage Man: Searching for the past through the trash
Razor: A VR fetch quest, exploration game that reveals the hidden stories behind objects that were thrown into a landfill
Garbage man is a story focused collectable game where players have a list of items to find. As they find these items, each of these garbage will have a story behind why they need to be collected. These items slowly give a story about what happened to this world, why it is so garbage filled, and why your character is doing this.
Birds of a Feather: Despite your best intentions you may fall victim to the harsh outcome of your surroundings
Razor: Flock together in unity to provide food for your young in the harsh conditions that the environment provides to you.
Birds of a Feather raises awareness of garbage contaminants that pollute our natural environment beyond our normal level of acknowledgment.
To swap roles with a bird, you are overwhelmed with amazing freedom– the ability to search and forage food for yourself. Sometimes nature is forgiving, and the sources of food for survival are abundant. There are also times which food is scarcer, and despite your best intentions tragedies may occur. The user will do their best to provide nurture to their bird, which they will name at the beginning of the performance. The theme of consuming to survive will serve as a motivator for proper gameplay and nurture of the natural environment.
Eventually, the user will realize that collecting and consuming enough healthy food is impossible (more difficult each day, simulated by a timer) and if the baby eats too many pieces of garbage they will proceed to become more influenced by the sickness that the environmental contaminants provide.
Our aim is to educate players the severity of physical waste-based pollution and the effects to the species that it creates.
Players are able to see the effects of garbage, from the point of view of animal life, and experience how birds are affected by the garbage in their natural environments. We hope to attain through this experience an impact on players that makes them more aware about what we have done to our environment, with the hope that empathy influences their future decisions in the real world.
Passing Memories: Nature remembers the fate you chose
Razor: This is a puzzle game where the story and ending changes depending on how the players complete the tasks, and the ending can be flourishing and vibrant or dark and desolate based on the player’s choices
Passing Memories is a narrative game centered around travelling through memories of past environmental actions, and living with the repercussions. Our player travels through rifts in their memory, leading them towards a defining fate. Either their choices are environmentally friendly and save the environment or their choices are lazy and create environmental ruin. Either way, decisions do matter.
Showcase and Project Videos from Summer 2017 offering
On Friday June 23, 2017, the students from my course on “immersive environments” (IAT 445) presented their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from 10am — 2:30pm.
9 student teams will showcase their own immersive Virtual Reality projects that they developed in the popular game engine Unity3D and will present using the Oculus Rift head-mounted display.
Get ready to become a polar bear experiencing the aftermaths of our own decision and how it affects global warming, VR survival training while confronted with conflicting inner voices, being a synaesthete (seeing sound) in turmoil over a conflict of artistic aspirations, unraveling the mysteries of an abandoned mansion, emotionally connecting to a child’s inner world by experiencing their dreams, experiencing the loneliness of an abandoned dog first-hand/paw, and much more.
Some projects draw from contemporary indie/art computer games like Dear Esther, Journey, or Stanley’s Parable and cinema, fiction/sci-fi, and of course VR. Students were tasked to design for a purposeful and immersive user experience — this semester’s design challenge for students was Going beyond: “Use unity3D and guiding frameworks (e.g., immersion, presence, user-centered systems design etc.) to iteratively ideate, design, prototype, and evaluate an immersive and interactive virtual environment experience that “goes beyond”: How could you provide interesting, inspiring, or meaningful experiences in VR? That is, what experiences could you provide in VR that are otherwise difficult, dangerous, or hard to experience? Instead of using VR as only a past-time and ultimate sensory overload tool to wow people, how could you use it for something more interesting, novel, exciting, or meaningful?” Be prepared for some exciting showcases!
In case you can’t make it to the interactive project showcase, you can join the public project video presentation session on Thursday June 29th at 2:30pm, in Surrey room #5380, or wait for the best videos to be posted online.
See SFU’s media release, on publicnow.com for current media information, and the Teaching & Learning blog for a news story on this course from Spring 2013, entitled: “How a SIAT course in immersive environments exposed students to the real world”
See my teaching page and SFU media release for more infos. The redesign of the 2013 offering of the course was supported by a Teaching and Learning Development Grant and invaluable ongoing assistance by educational consultant Barb Berry.
Pictures from showcase:
Sample Project Videos
Forlorn 
Canvas of Sound 
Echo 
Adrift
Finding Home 
The Cave 
Project posters:
Executive summaries that were handed out during the showcase
Showcase and Project Videos from Fall 2016 offering
IAT 445 immersive environments showcase Fall 2016
Below are the project posters and pictures from our showcase on Friday December 9th 2016, where students from my course on “immersive environments” (IAT 445) presented their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from about 10:00am — 2pm. See also SFU’s Media Advisory.
Students were tasked to design for a purposeful and immersive user experience — this semester’s design challenge for students was evoking a strong yet meaningful feeling of empathy
Here’s the official SFU 1-minute coverage of my IAT 445 Immersive Environments course:
and media coverage from BlackPress at http://www.northdeltareporter.com/news/405786476.html]
Sample Project Videos
Parallel Minds 
The Reef
The Painter 
Retrograde 
Below are the project posters:
and the first page of the executive summaries (see here for Full pdf's)
other project pictures and materials:
Showcase and Project Videos from Summer Intersession 2015 offering
Below are the project posters and pictures from our showcase on Friday June 26th 2015
this semester’s design challenge for students was evoking a strong yet meaningful emotional or visceral response using an immersive environemnt built with the game engine Unity3D that most students just started learning at the beginning of the semester.
Sample Project Videos
CDM by team Much VR
Mystic by team Mystikal Lab
B-Eye by team Bees
The Passage by team M.O.S.T.
https://vimeo.com/132536087 Hooked by team Muffins
Project showcase on Friday November 28th 2014
Below are the project posters for the Fall 2014 showcase
Project posters:
Sample Project Videos
Omen by team Maze
Love &Grief
Sweet Sacrifice by team super sparkly pink unicorn 4K
Impressions from the showcase:
Showcase and Project Videos from Summer Intersession 2014 offering
Below are the project posters for the showcase on Friday June 20th, 2014:
Sample Project Videos
Here are some of the final project videos of the teams:
Team Skywalker: Fall from the sky
Team Dream Up: Awakening
Sweets
Team Zissou: Glow
Team imaginarious: Lukomorye
Impressions from the showcase:
Showcase and Project Videos from Fall 2013 offering
Below are the project posters for the showcase on Thursday Nov. 28 2013:
Sample Project Videos
Here are some of the final project videos of the teams:
Team Mindfulness: (REM)INISCENT
Team WAKE: WAKE
Team Segway: Azuria
Team Insanity: Conjecture
Impressions from the showcase:
Showcase, Project Videos, and Portfolios from Spring 2013 offering
Examples from Project Showcase
On April 4 & 5th 2013, the students from the “immersive environments” course (IAT 445) presented their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus. 9 Teams showcased their own immersive Virtual Reality projects that they developed in the popular game engine Unity3D - for most of them this was their first exposure to the software. Below are first impressions of the showcase — thanks to all the students for their great contributions!
Sample Project Videos
Here are some of the final project videos of the teams:
Team Pendulum: Finding Alice
Team UFOria: Alien Abduction
Team Underland: Underlurcker
Additional media coverage: SFU media release
Student Portfolios
Below are some examples from Student portfolios which were created as part of this course to highlight students’ skills and projects and promote their competitiveness on the job market.
Amy Hsuanwen Wang
Devin Cook
Stefan Dalen
Sarah Han
Kyle Historillo
Khalid Abdullah
The redesign of the 2013 offering of the course was supported by a Teaching and Learning Development Grant and invaluable assistance by educational consultant Barb Berry.
