Case Study: Innovation in the Curriculum: Using Virtual Reality to Teach Empathy.

Abstract

Empathic modelling is a common approach to encourage designers (and students of design) to better understand their end users - especially those users who might have considerably different perspectives to their own (e.g. due to visual/mobility impairments). In contrast with a real-world setting, Virtual Reality (VR) offers the potential to ‘step into another person’s shoes’ in a controlled and relatively safe environment. Moreover, it allows an exploration of empathy for future worlds, not yet available. Last semester we conducted an exploratory study, where 13 final-year undergraduate design students were given the opportunity to experience a challenging world in immersive VR where they had to undertake common tasks (cross the road, use a cashpoint, read signs). During these activities, students embodied a variety of bespoke ‘impairment avatars’ – wheelchair user, cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration. An empathy questionnaire completed pre/post session indicated that students had greater empathy for disabled users following the VR experience. Qualitatively, students also demonstrated a greater breadth and depth of insights into the needs of others following their immersive experience and, importantly, realised that they could not rely on their assumptions in their future work. This project has highlighted the significant potential for the use of VR in the teaching of empathy for students of design. More broadly, our work has implications in the teaching of soft skills across the University, demonstrating the power of VR to significantly enhance educational outcomes for our students.

1. Background

It is increasingly important to widen our design students’ ‘empathic horizon’ - that is the extent to which they can draw upon their own experiences to account for others with fundamentally different world perspectives (Woodcock et al., 2019). In this form of experiential learning, within SDCA we commonly employ a range of wearable simulations (via bespoke glasses, gloves, etc.) to help our students to better understand how people with varying impairments may experience everyday life situations- thereby enabling their delivery of more inclusive solutions as future designers. However, such in-person tools are fundamentally limited, as we clearly cannot expose our students to risk when providing activities to conduct as an ‘impaired’ user. Moreover, we are restricted in the range of environments in which students might be able to explore - and cannot consider future/ prototype worlds. Finally, we can only simulate a small range of disability conditions – according to the availability of bespoke equipment for use in teaching. As part of the emerging DigiLabs initiative, we have considered the potential for immersive Virtual Reality (VR) to teach our design students empathy for a broader range of users/contexts – empowering them to critically assess physical and perceptual inaccessibility in dangerous/ challenging scenarios (Ott and Freina, 2015).  

2. Methodology

We conducted a preliminary research study with 13 students (six male and seven female aged 20-25 years) – all of whom were currently enrolled in the final year of their undergraduate course in product design and registered for an optional module in Inclusive Design. All students attended a session in Leonard Dixon theatre (the East Park DigiLab designated space) in November 2023 – where the learning outcomes were to understand the concept of empathy in inclusive design practice. Ethics approval was granted in advance to survey/interview the students and to video the session. The session lasted approximately 2 hours and involved the students undertaking the following activities: introduction to goals of session/VR technology; completion of consent form and pre-session empathy in design scale (Drouet et al., 2022); VR session (approx. 20 minutes duration) involving a range of activities utilising different impairment avatars (visual and physical); completion of post-session empathy in design scale; focus group discussion on opinions. The virtual world itself was deliberately designed to be challenging, with low luminance, glare from low sun, small text on signs, etc. The figure on the left below shows some of the students wearing VR headsets engaging in an activity where they had to cross a busy road multiple times embodied as a wheelchair user. On the right, the figure shows statistically significant results in the increase in perceived empathy after they had had the immersive experience. Specifically, the graph shows that students were more sensitive/immersed in the user’s point of view, more connected with the users on an emotional/personal level and felt better able to consider the needs of these users in their future roles as a designer/independent person (all p<0.05).

3. Issues

There were numerous challenges in the technical building of the virtual world and impairment avatars used in the study (developed using the Blender 3D modelling software and published to the Mozilla Hubs social VR platform). To ensure good performance with VR experienced on the browser, it is important to optimise (polygon count, texture sizes etc.) – as documented by the lead author in this article (Burnett, 2021). In addition, various practical issues emerged in the onboarding process for students using immersive VR headsets – as it became apparent that most students had no/very limited prior experience with this technology. To cater for these problems, a robust protocol was developed in advance to ensure students were comfortable in wearing a headset and using the controllers, so they could be focused on learning outcomes during the session, rather than the technology itself.

4. Benefits

We gave each student a clearly defined ‘guardian space’ that they could move safely around in (see coloured squares in figure on left above). Moreover, we utilised the large screen in the theatre space to show a roaming camera perspective in the virtual world. This initiative was extremely useful for showing the students in advance what they would need to do before they were immersed in VR, as well as providing an informative and engaging perspective for the audience (i.e. students waiting their turn).

5. Evidence of Success  

We have numerous data to evidence the success of our novel approach to teaching empathy using VR. As noted above, survey data indicates significantly enhanced empathy following the immersive teaching intervention. In addition, the focus group activity highlighted the differences between what the students imagined and what they actually experienced, with VR both widening and deepening their outlooks on people with varying world perspectives to their own, for instance: ‘While I had guessed the problems they may face the extent and effects of these problems are far greater than I realised” and, “I felt so much more vulnerable…”. In addition, the video observations indicated how students exhibited behaviours that reflected the difficulties directly experienced by individuals with specific impairments, such as struggling to reach buttons of a cashpoint when in a wheelchair, or putting eyes very close to text when trying to read a sign. Moreover, verbal exclamations demonstrated the fear that some students experienced, e.g. crossing the road as a glaucoma sufferer.

6. How Can Other Academics Reproduce This?  

Whilst the teaching of empathy is specific to the design discipline, it is arguable that empathy is an important soft skill relevant to the Universities’ strategic aim to be “more diverse, equitable and inclusive’. Our use of browserbased social VR means that other academics could employ our virtual worlds/avatars on any devices (both immersive and non-immersive). Moreover, it is anticipated that sessions such as the pilot one we have conducted will become part of the DigiLabs portfolio of teaching, when the facilities are in operation.

7. Reflections

We feel it is important to repeat this session with a wider range of students to increase sample size and gauge different perspectives – and will re-run the session with postgraduate students in Human Factors/Ergonomics in March. Moving forward, we intend to expand the range of impairment avatars available, including different forms of colour blindness, as well as other mobility challenges utilising immersive haptic gloves (e.g. tremors). In addition, in future sessions we will increase the degree of interactivity within the virtual world, requiring students to undertake a broader range of tasks of relevance, such as entering a PIN into a cashpoint, withdrawing money from slot, engaging with shop assistant, and so on.

8. References  

Burnett, G.E. (2021). Bringing the metaverse to life: how I built a virtual reality for my students – and what I’ve learnt along the way. The Conversation (on-line) Drouet, L., Bongard-Blanchy, K., Koenig, V., Lallemand, C. (2022). Empathy in Design Scale: Development and initial insights. In: NCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts, New Orleans, USA. Ott, M., & Freina, L. (2015). A literature review on immersive virtual reality in education: State of the art and perspectives. In: 11th International Conference eLearning and Software for Education. Woodcock, A., McDonagh, D., Magee, P., Ball, T. IQBAL, S. (2019). Expanding Horizons: Engaging students with empathic thinking. In: International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, pp.12-13. Department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management. University of Strathclyde, UK.