Guidelines for Empathy Building for Bats with VR
Since the COVID pandemic, people have increased attempts to erase bat populations due to irrational fear of diseases. There is also a lack of awareness around the ecological importance of bats, who pollinate plants in their fight against climate change and kill harmful insects like mosquitoes.
According to AustinBats.Org,
"Bats are America's most rapidly declining and threatened warm-blooded animals. Alarming losses of free-tailed bats have been reported though their population status is inadequately monitored. Even the Congress Ave. Bridge bats appear to be in decline."
Academic studies have proven that VR can build empathy for animals by letting humans experience their day to day life.
This project aims to test and contribute to the design guidelines for building empathy towards animals, as defined by academic studies.
I worked as the Lead UX Researcher on this project alongside Ishita, Amanda, Fanyi and Soojin.
Research phase:
• Academic literature review
• User journeys
• Usability Testing
• Data analysis
Design phase:
• Storyboards
• UX writing
• Wireframing
• Prototyping
Canva, Unity, Figma, Qualtrics
Fall 2022 (8 weeks - October to December)
Since our project involved information architecture that needed to be tested for an exhibit, we employed the agile design methodology. This iterative process helped us seamlessly combine the multiple layers (the content research, the application and the 3D rendering of the space) crucial for the objectives we set out during ideation.
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Click on the ethereal landscape below to play my VR game.
To understand the problem space more concretely, I conducted desktop research to know more about the lives of bats and also what studies on VR can teach me about designing virtual environments for combatting zoophilia.
My secondary research into the importance of bats revealed the following:
They save farmers a billion dollars annually in avoided pesticide use by eating migrating pests and reducing egg-laying on crops
However, unfounded speculations and misleading research only strengthen the stigma against them. Colonies of millions have already been destroyed.
I conducted a review of 10 academic studies focusing on ways for building effective VR and its impact on empathy. Important insights are given below:
For instance, people with conventionally attractive avatars stand closer to peers in virtual spaces.
For instance, embodying the avatar of a gender minority and experiencing sexism helps people empathize more with gender minorities.
For instance, a person using a fox's avatar may use their foot as their tail, even if no such instructions were given by the game. A strong sense of immersion into the virtual environment can create strong feelings of ownership towards the avatar's body.
I questioned my colleagues and team members to understand how people predominantly view bats to understand who we were designing for. I also used the desktop research to guide my understanding of major user pain points:
"I don't know, I've never thought of bats. But if I have to, I guess they're scary"
"Weren't they the cause of covid? I'm sure they must spread many other diseases too"
"I remember seeing Batman and bats really creeped me out since then".
The pain points made it clear that a lot of the stigma and mystery surrounding bats. It is difficult to empathize with a creature that one is scared of and doesn't know much about. That became our guiding principle.
Our initial idea centered on a "Day in the Life" narrative. The experience would take the user through multiple activities that bats engage in, making them aware of their importance and the perils they face. However, further brainstorming sessions made us realize that a gamified experience would be better and we spent time exploring this further.
As revealed through desktop research, it was also important to create a strong sense of immersion by developing the setting to increase sense of ownership towards Batsy's (our main character) body.
We settled on a game idea where the objective would be to capture as many mosquitoes as one can while embodying a bat. The bat would capture mosquitoes placed around its path and help the humans in this way.
We decided to use the Meta Quest 2 because it is user-friendly, affordable and widely available.
It does not confine the user with a wire, unlike the Rift, and also has accurate motion tracking and a higher refresh rate that would make the experience immersive and keep motion sickness at bay.
The mid-fi prototype featured an urban forest with a freely moving bat character. It also featured mosquitos that could be 'caught' by pressing a button on the Oculus controller. However, it presented the risk of simulator sickness due to the height of the bat asset and its largely unhampered pathway.
By imagining our intended audiences, we adapted our product to suit how the physical space, the application and interpersonal would impact user experience.
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The initial wireframes drawn on paper for understanding the flow of the game and the features and characters we wanted to add to it. Some ideas included pleasant background music to set the mood and a 'snap' sound and haptic feedback on successfully catching mosquitoes.
An important point of contention was how the user would embody the agent. Our secondary research suggested that first-person embodiment results in the highest levels of IVBO (Illusion of Virtual Body Ownership), but this would not give us the desired results in terms of empathizing with the avatar, as the user can't see it. Another approach would be having the user follow the avatar in a third-person POV. This would result in increased empathy, but lessened IVBO.
We decided to come up with a hybrid POV (point-of-view) approach. The camera would be positioned slightly above the bat, allowing for the user to see the bat as it moves around, but not be too divorced from the game as a third-person POV.
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For the physical space, I researched Islamic architecture to inform the aesthetic of our imagined physical space. Based on my content research, my team calculated the footfall of the Austin Public Library and sketched out rooms with various ways of organizing information. These sketches were later visualized through AutoCAD.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
A VR showcase was held at the University of Texas at Austin where students and faculty could try out different projects.
The research questions that guided my user testing were based on the literature review conducted earlier. I created a pre- testing and a post-testing questionnaire to understand the following: How does immersion impact empathy-building in users?
Users were asked to rate feelings of self presence, spatial presence and empathy on a Likert scale of 1 to 5. A total of 22 people took the survey.
The game boosted empathy and improved attitudes toward bats in 10 people (48%) participants:
3 became more positive than positive,
3 became more positive than neutral, and
3 became more positive than negative.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
From this round of testing, we developed the following key takeaways:
Nomenclature: The names of several pages confused users, e.g. Art, Explore, My Library - it was challenging for users to complete information-seeking tasks on the first pass when they were unsure what they would find on these pages.
Navigability: The hamburger menu needed to be workshopped to include, exclude, and reorder functions. Additionally, it was challenging for users to locate the Princess Badr exhibit because they weren’t sure where to navigate- e.g. Exhibits, My Events, My Master Library.
Core Functionality: Some users weren’t sure they grasped the main purpose of the app. An e-reader? A booking site? Additional information? The AR game? We decided to focus less on booking and e-reading, and more on providing additional information + the AR game.
On the basis of lo-fi feedback, we created an updated mid-fi Figma prototype:
We conducted mid-fi testing right after spring break to further develop our phone app and to understand user behaviors at in-person exhibits
Nomenclature: The names of several pages confused users, e.g. Art, Explore, My Library - it was challenging for users to complete information-seeking tasks on the first pass when they were unsure what they would find on these pages.
Navigability: The hamburger menu needed to be workshopped to include, exclude, and reorder functions. Additionally, it was challenging for users to locate the Princess Badr exhibit because they weren’t sure where to navigate- e.g. Exhibits, My Events, My Master Library.
Core Functionality: Some users weren’t sure they grasped the main purpose of the app. An e-reader? A booking site? Additional information? The AR game? We decided to focus less on booking and e-reading, and more on providing additional information + the AR game.
We set up our simulated environment in the PCL grad student lounge.
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