For my capstone project at the University of Washington Seattle, my group and I were assigned to Meta, formerly known as Facebook, to help answer the following prompt: How do we build virtual worlds that are more inclusive and accessible than real worlds? Throughout this research, many pivots occurred and lots of effort were put into this to ensure that we created a solution that caters to everyone.
Starting this research was really challenging because the prompt was very broad. First off, my team and I were all still new to virtual reality. Second, we did not know how Meta defined accessibility and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). So, to start off in this journey, we had to understand everything. We started off with surveys, then field observations, and ending it with a competitive analysis to comprehend this broad topic.
Surveys
We wanted to understand more about Horizon Worlds, the platform we are focusing on, and the general Metaverse. We sent out surveys and had people answer general questions regarding DEI in the Metaverse.
After a week of letting people answer our surveys, we noticed we had a lot of interesting responses and common thoughts between people. The one that stood out the most to me was...
Some people think that DEI is unnecessary in the Metaverse since people constantly change their avatars and can be someone different everyday a. "Because I use avatars it is hard to know where people are from or how they look" - Person1 b. "...You can be anything in terms of your avatar... I can literally choose to be a tree, a mushroom, or even Spider-Man." - Person 2
Field Observation
After compiling our notes from the survey, my team and I decided to go into the Metaverse ourselves and understand the environment. The four of us had different experiences going into Horizon World.
Danny: Entered a museum world where the art had no meaning or interpretation behind them. Saw a person asking another person to call them the n-word. Adam: Interacted with a lot of variety of people during a gaming session in Horizon World. Had a person come up to him and say "Dab me out brother" (stereotypical phrase?). Varun: Also interacted and played a few games with a variety of people. Made good conversation with some of the players as well. Erica: Was a little shy and wasn't able to communicate too much, but thought it was interesting to see people easily starting conversations after walking up to random people. We all had unique experiences and thought that Horizon World seemed like a place where everyone is nice and respectful. However, some of us did notice some weird things, like Adam having someone use a stereotypical phrase towards him. However, we wanted to see what it's like outside of Horizon Worlds.
Competitive Analysis
We went to other platforms in the Metaverse to see how some of them are incorporating DEI. Of all the different platforms, the three that stood out the most were VR Chat, Half + Half, and AltspaceVR. Some things we noted were... VR Chat: 1. People can easily change their avatars into whatever they like (male, female, creatures, cartoons) 2. This platform has a focus on roleplaying Takeaways: Hard to gauge diversity in this world since the players are constantly roleplaying other people
Half + Half: 1. The player models are all colored astronaut-looking people 2. When people speak, they produce a sound that can't be comprehended Takeaways: Not as diverse and no communication between people until later on in the platform
AltspaceVR: 1. Everything is very similar to Horizon Worlds Takeaways: This had the most usage of DEI, since the experience is almost the same as Horizon Worlds
Design Question
After compiling all of our explorative research on our prompt, we had a better understanding of what we wanted/needed to do. With that, we decided that we wanted to focus primarily on the content creating in the Metaverse. We want people to be mindful about creating worlds or objects when creating about another culture, which leads to our design question...
How might we design a process for creating content in the Metaverse that encourages diversity and promotes cultural representation?
User Research
With our design question, it allowed us to start our research. We wanted to understand more about the experiences and perspective of our users. We needed to know what is already in Horizon Worlds and what should be added to help increase DEI. With that in mind, we started interviewing creators in Horizon Worlds, created user personas based on those creators, designed journey maps for the personas, and figured out the user flow to start creating worlds.
Interviews
We requested to interview with some of our survey takers during our initial exploration phase. We were able to get a total of 5 different people to tell us about their experience with Horizon Worlds and using the creator tool, the platform's tool to allow people to create worlds.
From these interviews, we had some useful and interesting takeaways, such as...
1. Some people may not know that they're misappropriating a culture. An interviewee came with a Japanese name and told us he build Japanese worlds, but is they're not Japanese at all. 2. There are already some people in Horizon Worlds dedicated to help promote cultural knowledge through their worlds. One interviewee talked about how we host weekly events to build Latino-related worlds. Another interviewee talked about how she create worlds based on her heritage and her past.
User Personas
With the data we acquired from the user research, we were able to create two user personas.
The first persona is named Megan Tusk. She is an inexperienced creator in Horizon Worlds. She recently started building without realizing that she is misappropriating a specific culture. She struggles to figure out how to incorporate DEI into her other worlds.
The second person is named Gabriel Perez. We call him the Savvy Creator because of his experience building in Horizon Worlds. He is passionate about building worlds that represent his identity. However, he struggles to find help to make his world a "virtual" reality.
User Journey Maps
With the personas already created, it was time to design their journey.
With Megan, we had her go into her old worlds and found that she never put any efforts into adding a piece of her identity in them. In order to help her figure out how to do this, she went to explore other worlds and found that her solution is a type of museum.
In this journey, Megan's emotions were fairly consistent and was relatively smooth throughout the journey (besides that bump in the middle).
Gabriel, on the other hand, had a more tougher journey. He entered the world trying to find another creator to help him build his world. He was able to eventually find one. However, that creator created an object that misappropriated Gabriel's culture. Yet, they were able to communicate with one another and create a world that Gabriel envisioned.
In this journey, Gabriel's emotions had many drops and spikes. However, it ended with a positive emotion.
User Flow
Next, we created a flow chart of the typical interaction that someone would go through to start creating their world.
This was created because we wanted to see where we would be able to leave messages or information to remind users to incorporate DEI into their builds.
We found that the best place to put these messages were on the loading screen. There are currently screens there that talk about the creator tool. It would be easy to incorporate a quick screen about DEI.
Design/Prototype
After weeks of research, it was time to figure out and create our solution. We wanted our solution to be universal and easy to comprehend. We wanted something that anyone of all ages can use it. We wanted something that looks fun and interesting. I pitched the idea to create puzzle pieces and have it so that when it combines together, it creates an image. Everyone thought that was an intriguing idea. After a little deliberation, we decided to create the Puzzle Pieces of Diversity.
Tool Creation
The puzzle pieces of Diversity are 4 individual pieces, each representing a different heuristic that we advise creators to ask and answer.
The first piece is called Friendship. This piece asks the user to answer the question "Who are you building for?" This question allows the creators to think about who will be seeing and visiting their world.
The second piece is called Action. The question is "What is the intended purpose of your world?" This questions asks the creator to think about why they are building the world. Is it to inform someone about a culture? Is it to help embrace someone else's culture?
The third piece is called Character. It asks "What could be the impact of your world?" This allows creators to think about how the world would affect them and the culture they are creating for. Will this world embarrass that culture?
Lastly, we have Express. This asks "Does this represent your identity?" This question wants the creator to rethink whether they are the best person to build this world. If they are still adamant about creating the world, then hopefully they consider co-creating with someone of that culture
Once the creator can understand and utilize all of the puzzle pieces, then once combined, it was create a smiley FACE. The smiley face is to allow the creator to know that they did their very best to create a diverse world that helps represent a culture to the best of their ability.
Participatory Design
To confirm that the Puzzle Pieces of Diversity works, my team and I decided to test it out. We sent out a survey to ask people around the world to submit a sketch of an object that best represents their culture/identity. We received many entries and tried to recreate as many as we can during a short time period. With the heuristics from the Puzzle Pieces of Diversity in the back of our minds, we created our objects to the best of our abilities. Throughout the process, we made sure to constantly contact the original drawer throughout the creating process so confirm whether we are on the right track. After a few days, we were able to create a good variety of them in our custom world.
World Building
We had a large quantity of items in our world, but because this is a world in Horizon Worlds, we wanted to make sure that when people come in, they don't leave right away. We call the world The Diversity Playground. We decided to design The Diversity Playground with two platforms. The main platform where everyone spawns in will have the puzzle pieces in front of them. These puzzle pieces, when picked up, will display the question in front of the player. When they cross the bridge, they will enter the Diversity Plaza. This plaza will have every object that we made we placed in the correlated location of where people would expect to find these items. However, we also placed a huge sign stating everything we built so that people can check them out. Each item also has a secret. When the object we created is picked up, it will play a sound of the original designer on why that object represents their culture/identity.
Validation
With everything created, it was time for the team and I to validate whether our heuristic works. We wanted to make sure that everything we created was fine and whether the world is interesting enough for people to come. Below, you will read the feedback we received for our some of our objects and see how well our world did.
User Feedback
We contacted all of the designers that sent in a sketch and ask them to leave us feedback on how we did on our objects we created in Horizon World. We received an outstanding amount of feedback exclaiming how well we did. We had feedback saying how detailed some of the objects were or how real the object looks as well. Although, there were a few that needed some improvement like this oil lamp. However, that just means we can reuse our heuristics again!
World Heuristics
As for the world, we wanted to see how well our world would do. The team and I hosted an event where people can see our world in the main menu. If they were interested, then they would appear in our world.
We had about 28 people interested in our world. However, due to the world still being new, there were not enough items to keep the visitors at bay.
The most memorable visitor that came was a teacher who thought our world was really cool. She explained how she wants her school to incorporate learning with VR, but people were still skeptical about that idea. She explained how she loved that we used VR for our capstone project. :)
Video
In this video, my team and I recorded a quick demonstration of what the world has, what it looks like, and how the environment works. Enjoy!
Reflection
Overall, I thought that my team and I did a really good job with our research/capstone project. We put so much effort into making sure that our project did not disappoint the Meta team. However, it seemed like they really enjoyed watching us go through this journey. I remember a time at the beginning of the capstone journey when we were all panicking because the prompt that was given to us was so broad. We had to pivot our ideas so many times and it felt like we were very behind. However, we made it! We were able to present our idea and had a lot of people interested in our work. Personally, the efforts that I put into this project took a lot out of me. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t the reason the team failed. I always made sure to do my part of the capstone on time and be there at almost every meeting. This was my first time utilizing all the skills that HCDE has taught me. I thought that I would forget how to do a few steps of the design process. However, I felt like a natural. It felt like I have been doing this for years. The most fun I had during this capstone was when my team and I were creating the world. There were many laughs and casual conversations. It made the hours in that world go by quickly. If it wasn’t for the quick draining batteries on the Oculus, I feel like a lot of us would still be on just to hangout. The most challenging part of this capstone was the very beginning. We initially had an idea to create a solution primarily for Native Americans. However, after discussing this idea with our mentors during our HCDE class, we thought that this topic would be very dangerous. Because none of us in the team were Native American, that could lead to us accidentally misappropriating that culture. Plus, that would also mean that we would have to co-design with a Native American, VR user who is of the same tribe. That was going to be a huge struggle for all of us. If I could change one thing about our research, it would be planning out a better timeline. Because of our many pivots, our timeline got messed up. There were many assignments that we had to rush because of how lost we got in the beginning. However, I was very proud of my team for being able to stay calm during this time of crisis and being able to make do with what we had. I feel like having the opportunity to work on a huge project like this at the end of the school year was very beneficial for me because since we are about to graduate, this will allow me to carry the experience and mindset that I have developed with me to my future work to ensure that my work will be of top quality.
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