or Are we excited just about XR?
100s of immersive educational contents are being created and curated to kids to get excited about learning. Are we addressing the source of stimulation and what exactly excites them?
👆🏽Click to read my thoughts on this
I recently was listening to this recent episode of PwC Teck Talks which evoked me to write this article/ blog. Here, Dr.Muhsinah Morris rightly points out the need for kids to have a proper onboarding passage before they start interacting with the virtual world.
Let’s take a step back, aren’t we assuming that all kids would have a singular emotion called “excitement” when they use VR headsets? Aren’t we neglecting the spectrum of emotions that a kid could go through when they are in the virtual world? Are we catering to the convenient demography?
Having worked in the XR industry for two years as a designer, these are some of the important questions I failed to ask myself. What better way to overcome this than giving a voice to these thoughts that I ponder upon. This could be my first step in accessing a better solution for it.
What does ‘Flash in the Pan’ have to do with it?
Well even if the kid does feel the emotion of excitement for VR, is it because they have found a new toy and its trendy and its cool? Or are they truly excited by the things that they learn and experience in VR?
To avoid the former and achieve the latter, there needs to be an onboarding process that every kid needs to go through a process of dipping their toes in the water, in contrast to diving head first. This could potentially not just stabilise their emotional state, but also make them feel comfortable with themselves in the virtual world.
Dr.Muhsinah says she has adopted a step-by-step technique of onboarding her student onto educational content. “The main goal is to get them to be still first” she says as she explains that the first step is a meditative process where the students experience the virtual world for the first time. This gives them a minute for them to settle down adjust to the virtual world, their thoughts and to the physical hardware that they are wearing. I remember watching a YouTube video where a dog owner comes back home from a full day of work to his highly excited two lovely dogs, but completely ignores them for almost five minutes (which might seem counterintuitive) until they settle down in their own spaces. He explains that this helps avoid overstimulation for his dogs which might help them to learn to relax and rest.
There are two ways to make a person learn how to swim, one way is to push them into water and trust their survival skills to kick in….. or…. get them slowly acquainted to the concept of water, let them dip their toes and feet into it, let them feel the force of water against their body and then guide and teach them to lose their inhibitions.
So…. what am I going to do?
I am planning to come up with guidelines for onboarding into the world of virtual reality. It's not just kids who need this, but for people of all ages. Since kids are the most vulnerable, and therefore I am starting with kids and working my way backwards.