A year since the advent of consumer-based virtual reality platforms like Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR, developers and researchers are mounting considerable efforts to innovate and improve the emerging technology, particularly for kids and family experiences.
And while a great deal remains unknown, established companies are bringing a raft of new insights, lessons learned and best practices to light. The goals for players like UK-based research firm and digital studio Dubit, UK games developer Climax Studios and L.A.-based The Virtual Reality Company (VRC) is to garner parental trust, ensure the safety of kids, and ultimately, drive the financial sustainability of the nascent industry.
Dubit, for one, is currently in the midst of a three-part, in-house study examining kids’ use of VR as it relates to on-boarding, engagement and health and safety. Leading the research is childhood education specialist Dr. Dylan Yamada-Rice, senior research manager and a former early childhood education lecturer at the University of Sheffield. She also previously worked on CBeebies’ Tech and Play project, which explored preschoolers’ app usage.
The Dubit VR study has so far delivered an initial pilot report, where 10 pairs of children ages eight to 12 were brought in to play on a range of different devices with various content to see what they liked or didn’t like. A second element of the study, which is also underway, looks at health and safety and tests how VR might affect sight, depth perception and balance. The third segment of the study will take an ethnographic approach, where VR equipment is placed in children’s homes for a week to see how it fits into their everyday lives.
“What I find interesting on the interactive and engagement side, is that children are most interested in content that looks less visually realistic,” says Yamada-Rice. “Content like Google Earth is popular, but with other content we tested, the kids enjoyed cartoon-type images more. The reason this content is so popular is that it’s easier for children to use their own imaginations in the experiences.”
Not surprisingly, open-ended VR games like Owlchemy Labs’ animated Job Simulator also proved to delight kids by letting them do things that they might not be able to do in real life like work in an office or become a gourmet chef or an auto mechanic.
Along with confirming the popularity of Minecraft-type experiences, the study also provides insights that help dispel the notion that VR is an anti-social, solitary experience detrimental to kids’ development.
“We’re finding the opposite,” says Yamada-Rice. “In pairs, children are really chatty and engaged with each other.”
For each pair, one kid would have the VR headset experience while his or her friend watched on a separate screen in the room. According to Yamada-Rice, children without the headsets added to the experience by shouting out things the other child might be able to do. Or from a tactile, physical place, they would sometimes run behind their VR-immersed friends to touch their backs.
“Just how tactile kids want to be with content is really interesting. Compared to adults and parents, who are a bit cautious with VR at first, children run all over the place,” says Yamada-Rice. “But in terms of content development and health and safety, do you want them to move around that fast, or could this potentially throw them more off balance?”
Balance is one of the more obvious and immediate health and safety issues developers need to sort out, notes Yamada-Rice. “Kids are used to reaching for things because they’re at adult height. But even when you calibrate the VR experience for kids’ heights, if they do lose their balance because they are very much engaged in the space, they might try to use virtual objects to steady themselves, which are obviously not there, so it’s problematic,” she says. “So keeping the interactive content down a little bit lower, where they don’t have to stretch, could potentially solve the issue.”
Between first and third
Digging deeper into VR as a more social outlet, Climax Studios is on th