Honoured to be one of the exhibitors on behalf of Capgemini in Women in Data conference by using virtual reality (VR) to showcase the technology diversity at my workplace.
Now I am sharing the story about how I lost my voice after non stop speaking for 9 hours - just a day before leaving for my honeymoon 😂
Prelude
What is this conference?
This is a conference to celebrate women (yay!) who dedicate their careers in data industry. As we owned the booth next to the barista, the booth organiser would take VR as a gamified opportunity to draw the attention from the crowd (and the coffee queue!).
How to link metaverse to Women in Data?
The VR team had done all the work! They have created several avatars of the booth exhibitors standing in the metaverse area. The gist to let the guests enjoy the immersive experience, explore the themed metaverse freely and interact with avatar as a ice breaker at the booth.
BUT! Can you see the challenges?
Yes you are right! The limited physical space and the TV!
Why the physical environment is important to demo a VR experience?
- Player needs to feel safe and comfortable when they cannot see outside of the VR headset 😱
- VR causes motion sickness because of the sensory conflict among sights, hearing and spatial awareness. If players feel stressed in the environment, on top of the sensory mismatch, the motion sickness would be more severe 🤢😵💫
Even I had my second cup of coffee at hand, I was concerned about the experience wouldn’t be as smooth as we planned:
⚠️ Our booth is too closed to the barista for safety
⚠️ Not a good idea to gather people stand in front of the TV when I cast the headset (or the barista pours hot espresso on me)
⚠️ I believe the guests would scream as soon as the headset blocked their eyesights.
⚠️ Plugs are next to the barista, no other choices
Let’s use 💎double diamond💎 to solve my problem!
Discover
I invited a few exhibitors to experiment the environment and the audio volume before the door opened. A few things I wanted to know about their trial:
- [Hear] Can they hear the voiceover?
- [Space] Would they walk around within the roomscale boundary I set?
- [Controller] How do they use it? Are you a console gamer?
However, the exhibitors couldn’t hear the voiceover clearly because they had to talk to me, and they were afraid to move around without seeing, didn’t bother to walk 1 small step.
Define (the environment)
✅ Stationary boundary
Rest assure they don’t need to walk, although encourage to look around to see the metaverse.
✅ Control
They simply used the joystick to move or teleport.
✅ Hearing
I decided to turn off the volume as the hallway became very loud. I had to act as an audio guide and helping guests feel safe without seeing.
Design (the experience)
The crowd and the coffee queue existed already! Of course the VR set up had ignited their curiosity.
Cast the headset to my laptop ❌
Facilitator perspective
It was inconvenient. I casted the VR to my laptop for the first wave of guest, however, the network was unstable as well as casting required changing accounts on Meta when I used another headset.
Audience perspective
Watching the (mostly novice) guest was looking at did not get their attention long:
- the angles moved too fast
- they did not know what to see
Using Engage👏🏻
To adapt the limited space, annoying power plug placement, and the uncontrollable crowd near our booth, I redesigned the gist from “strolling in metaverse” to “joining my tour in metaverse”
“Do you see me? I am the one wearing a orange top!”
It works! Engage made an unexpected debut to this conference.
Deliver (a story)
Thank to Joycey the tour guide, I successfully engaged the crowd without directly talking to them.
Joycey the tour guide
- As the facilitator (tour guide), I could simple follow/ see the guest by looking at my laptop rather than keep asking “where are you”?
- I could take the primary control of the walking flow and design a relevant ‘tour’ experience the guests from our conversations
- It is super handy to teleport the guest and showcase other metaverses then share the case studies as a wrap up!
The guest
- Following Joycey the tour guide made them feel safe at the early stage
- Asked for more interactions with my avatar and get to know more about metaverse
The crowd
👥👥👥👥👥👥
- The crowd was intrigued!
- Giving them spoiler alert did offer them assurance to experience the unknown
- Novice audience were inspired by the metaverse and they requested to exchange business contacts!
Feedback
✅ Exchanged 3 business contacts on behalf of the VR team in exploring airport lounge experience and finance industry
✅ Impressive feedback from the conference and exhibitors
✅ Exhibitors requested if they could take a photo of their avatar after the event
I lost my voice, but I was genuinely proud of my experience on that day! Thanks for reading. 🧡
