What are the most effective ways to incorporate interactivity into VR educational stories?

For users new to the mechanics of VR hardware and software, it is best to start them off with a simple interactivity. Branched narratives where users select a choice that affects the ongoing storyline is a great starting point as it only requires users to know how to perform a single action (select option) while giving them a sense of empowerment in the VR experience.

Invariably, stories that connect socially or emotionally will lend toward a higher level of user engagement. Consider which conventions of good storytelling will compliment and even enhance learning objectives--as well as resonate with the intended user persona. Add a "sage"-like character to help guide or coach the user. Consider how timing within the virtual story can add a sense of pressure. To the main point of this article, determine the level of interactivity that helps achieve learning and avoid mechanics that over complicate the experience.

In my perspective, exploring gamification is a powerful concept for enhancing interactivity in VR educational stories. Integrate game elements like challenges, rewards, and progress tracking to make the learning experience not just informative, but also engaging and enjoyable for users.

While designing interactive elements, one must consider the user's comfort zone as well. While it is difficult to design for all types of users, it is important to understand if key users of VR will be comfortable to interacting with the elements we design. E.g. a VR game designed to train surgical procedures must consider surgeon's haptic routines and their comfort in a surgical room. Similarly, VR that simulates maintenance operations must include the technician's mindset and physical positions in real situations. In VR one must also consider emotional responses to situations and stories, and it can play an important role in designing interactive elements.

One of the best ways to ideate and design user interactions is a technique called Bodystorming. You can simulate out how the user would interact with objects and the environment by acting in space. This allows you to move away from the screen and the 2D paradigms to come up with innovative ideas that are truly spatial. ShapesXR is a great tool to run bodystorming sessions with your teammates as it allows to import assets and environments in a virtual space and come up with various ideas you can test directly spatially BEFORE you start coding in game engines like Unity.

Incorporating interactivity into VR educational stories effectively hinges on balancing engagement with seamless storytelling. Interactivity is crucial for cognitive engagement, as it allows learners to actively participate, making the experience more memorable and impactful. However, it's essential to maintain storytelling fluidity to avoid a 'break in presence', which can disrupt the immersive experience. To achieve this, interactions should feel natural and integral to the narrative, rather than arbitrary or forced. Overall, the key is to weave interactivity seamlessly into the narrative, ensuring that it enhances, rather than detracts from, the storytelling and learning experience.

VR creation is iterative in nature. Constantly test with your students at every stage will help you better refine your experience. You might notice some interactions you thought would be evident are harder for some students. Always keep the design process fluid and test constantly.

Getting your VR application tested and refined based on the feedback received is a crucial part of VR development, particularly in education. As each student has their own pace of learning, refining your application based on feedback from all of them helps your application achieve the intended goal behind its development.

Like with any UX dev process, here also you test early. But there are not as many resources readily available to get started with. For the low-fi prototyping, one tool that is very handy is the 360 panorama grid (https://medium.com/inborn-experience/vr-sketches-56599f99b357). Also there is a lot of research that proposes guidelines that can save you a few iterations, but unfortunately, they are also not as easy to find.

Don't re-create classrooms in VR. VR can inspire imagination, abstraction, art, science, languages. You have unlimited space, play with it. Don't ask students to sit on virtual chairs watching a teacher. That's a waste of their time.

Consider VR as a transformative tool that allows teachers and students to transcend the conventional constraints of time and space within the classroom. Through VR, they can embark on immersive journeys, not only through historical epochs but also across geographical borders, fostering global connections and cultural understanding. This technology compresses time for efficient learning, propelling students through complex processes and historical timelines with unparalleled engagement. Moreover, VR propels education into the future, enabling students to explore speculative scenarios and venture beyond Earth's confines, ushering in a new era of experiential and limitless learning possibilities.

When building any VR learning experience you should always full the D.I.C.E. methodology (developed by Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford). D.I.C.E. stands for Dangerous, Impossible, Counter-Intuitive, Expensive/Rare. In other words, is what you're trying to do in VR Dangerous in the real world, especially for new trainees (i.e. firefighting)? Is it impossible to do in the real world (i.e. shrinking to the size of an atom)? Is it Counter-intuitive (i.e. taking a vital piece of equipment off the road for training)? Or is it expensive (i.e. taking a class for a field trip in another country)? If your idea falls into one of those 4 categories you're off to a great start!