Virtual Reality Practice

At McMaster University, more than 1000 first-year engineering students go through an experiential-learning course where as the last project of the course, they are introduced to a client from the community of people with visible and/or invisible disabilities. Students are asked to use their skills to come up with a design to support the client to overcome their daily challenges. If you want to learn more about this course, please visit: https://www.eng.mcmaster.ca/integrated-cornerstone-design-projects-engineering-1p13/#tab-content-ov

In this client-based project, “collecting information” is very crucial. Since most of the challenges our clients deal with relate to their environment, visiting our clients’ living and working spaces can provide valuable information to students. This will also help students to see the challenges from the point of view of the client. During the first week of the project, and during client visit sessions, lots of photo and videos from clients’ spaces are shared with students. They also get a chance to virtually visit their spaces via Zoom calls.

Over years of running this project, main space-related challenges of the clients are put together to create a case study in form of a Virtual Reality (VR) experience. This VR is used as part of the training process to support students in active observation and collecting information part of their design thinking approach so they can create more relevant potential solutions.

Within our course, we also have VR headsets for students to use. However, the interactive 360 video is still very valuable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3p8xhPZBmk

For educators: You can download the original file of the 360 video here: https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/k0vl8ElSHJ

Acknowledgment: This creation of this VR This project was made possible with funding by the Government of Ontario and through
eCampusOntario’s support of Ontario Exchange Program.