Towards An Immersive Virtual Studio for Design Engineering

Abstract

The sharing of ideas, collaborative making, and serendipitous discussions and groupings are essential elements that foster creativity and growth among student cohorts. This applies specially to design- and/or engineering-related courses. Enabling these features is a unique requirement for creating a virtual communication platform tailored towards corresponding programs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we tested various virtual platforms in the context of design engineering education to deliver online courses. However, traditional teleconferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams - which were used on the daily basis - showed limitations in terms of interaction opportunities, group-based communication, and customisability. In previous work, we successfully tested a Spatialized Video Communication Platform which was resembling a 2D video game-like interaction: Gather.town. In this work, we extended this approach in a test study into the third dimension using two existing Virtual Reality-based platforms (Horizon Workrooms and Spatial) aiming to improve serendipitous interactions, group-based communication and quick group formation in distance teaching and learning. We conducted a workshop with each platform and collected student feedback with a questionnaire survey. We also ask the participants to relate their experiences to the earlier used Gather.town platform. Our finding showed that immersion is a crucial factor that impacts the effectiveness of group work in distance learning. However, we still found that there is a lot of potential for improvements before these frameworks can be used on a regular basis for teaching. This paper presents our applications and analysis of the two platforms and contributes insights on how to build a virtual studio environment for an interdisciplinary master's programme in design engineering.