Examining children’s design processes, perspective-taking, and collaboration when using VR head-mounted displays

We explore how children leverage virtual reality (VR) to reshape their design sensibilities and to expand their perspective-taking, which may lead to the children showing more empathic concerns for future users of their designs. We worked with middle school children, ages 13 to 14, who collaboratively designed sandbox maze models using our VR SandScape system, a spatial augmented reality (SAR) physical sandbox hybridized with a VR head-mounted display (HMD) that allowed them to experience the sandbox mazes in a full scale virtual environment. We compared this group with a second group of middle school children who worked in the same SAR sandbox without access to virtual immersion from the VR HMD. We found that the virtual immersion and multiple perspectives afforded by the HMD influenced the children’s design analysis methods by motivating them to evaluate their maze models from a designer’s view, a user’s view, or sometimes both views simultaneously, which involved consideration of allocentric perspectives (i.e., seeing their design from others’ perspectives compared to from only egocentric perspectives). The VR HMD group empathized with future users of their maze designs and approached design as an iterative problem-solving process, continually discovering and addressing new user needs. They gradually incorporated more user-accessible features such as wider paths and gentler slopes. In contrast, the Non-HMD group was less concerned about users’ needs but designed more playful and creative mazes. Overall, they were more quickly satisfied with their early designs without feeling the need to iterate. We discuss the role of virtual immersion in supporting children’s perspective-taking, which influences their critical or complimentary attitudes towards their design processes and design outcomes.