A Just Reality
The project concept is a virtual reality (VR) training tool to fill a gap in essential skills training for law enforcement when investigating gender-based violence incidents. As tech research lead, I made software and hardware recommendations, implemented the VR learning experience, and communicated with stakeholders. This included:
- Implementing narrative branching, scoring, user feedback, voice recording, and animation in CoPilot Designer editing software
- Managing user accounts, Oculus Quest 2, and project documentation for team of five
- Presenting and demonstrating the prototype at six conferences in 2022
See video below for a full walkthrough of the VR training prototype, Amy's Story:
Challenge: Team communication and branching narrative development
The members of the research team had a variety of different levels of technical experience. For help with scripting the initial conversational scenario, we brought in a writer who provided us with 3 separate scripts: one for the "good" conversational path, one for an "okay" path, and one for a "bad" path. However, we knew that we wanted learners to be able to choose from a selection of responses, rather than be locked into one set of dialogue.
We needed a solution that would:
- Combine the 3 scripts into a singular branching narrative path
- Document learning objectives
- Support real-time collaboration for all members of the team
After evaluating different online documentation tools, such as Miro and Mural, I recommended the MindMeister platform to the team because of its built in mapping tool. I created a design system to represent different path choices and annotate them with learning objectives so that we could provide appropriate feedback to the learner.
After reviewing the completed script with the team, I used the MindMeister map as a basis for implementing the prototype in CoPilot:
