For our final Hyper Island project we worked with the BBC CAPE (creating a positive environment) team who wanted to explore what the BBC News looked like within the metaverse for a range of audiences. The exciting part of the brief was that it contained non-explicit elements and therefore evolved into a ‘fuzzy problem’ thus resulting in deeper research and a more complex solution than we all first imagined.
Brief:
How might experience design be applied to BBC News across the Metaverse, considering new audiences and neurodiverse needs?
Process:
During the introduction to our client, the BBC CAPE team, cognitive needs and inclusivity were not explicitly mentioned within the brief, yet were consistent within the briefing document. As a team we were all fully aligned behind the ideals of inclusivity, therefore we were aware to keep these notions within our focus. Our quantitative research was primarily desktop based using articles and reports from the field of news metaverse and accessibility design. Our qualitative research was formed from interviews and discussions with a selection of people who had neurodivergent needs or worked with neurodivergent people plus metaverse experts. In order to be efficient we split the research tasks up, synthesised our findings and reported back to the team using ‘Scan Cards’, which helped condense the insights and signals discovered through each particular avenue of research.
As a team we used tools like ‘red ant man’ and ‘the planning cycle’ in order to create a design challenge or a How Might We (HMW). Although this started to push the team towards converging it also became noticeable that we were unclear of a path forwards with all the information and insights at hand. That being said two common themes were consistently spoke about; inclusivity & personalisation. Other discussions within the team pointed us to some key realisations; We needed further research that went deeper. We had no clear concept of what the end product could be. Our solution needed to be more than a vision or an impression of a metaverse news product. The need and desire to dive into a prototype quickly was growing.
These realisations led the team towards the idea of co-creation workshops as a means for research through design, potentially with people who were neurodiverse. Through creating a lo-fi prototype, we initially roleplayed with friends and classmates using prompts (questions/instructions), physical aids (3D glasses/controllers) and imagery (future/scifi) to imagine and simulate a metaverse experience. Their experience was captured by asking participants to sketch out what they imagined and how it worked on a white board while we videoed the session.
Solution:
As opposed to a finalised concept like an app or service, our solution was a presentation that combined elements of the project showcasing three key elements:
• An experiential presentation combining an immersive audio visual (AV) show with a feedback session designed to explain our understanding or neurodivergent needs
• A co-creation workshop designed to be used as a research through design method to understand how personalisation could be developed
• A reflection and provocation moment designed to highlight the need for co-creation through a ‘co-creation mindset’
• A research deck covering insights and potential opportunities
The first stage was the immersive AV experience where we had transformed an office room into a blacked out sensory overload news-verse lounge. We projected an array of content (news and social video clips mainly) all edited together to create a non linear atmosphere of distortion and disorientation that repeated and looped becoming more chaotic and louder until it finally and suddenly ended, cutting to black. Our aim was two fold; to vaguely recreate the actions and behaviours of some neurodiverse traits, rabbit holing for example, in order to heighten the attendees senses and overwhelm them emotionally. Secondly, directly after the immersive AV had stopped there was a small ‘step forward if’ game with questions relating to feelings and emotions in order for attendees to visually see who was the most affected. This explicitly showed that although the group had physically experienced the same immersive AV the resulting emotional experience differed depending on each person's level of neurodiversity. In effect, the experience was the same yet the perspective was not.
We used this moment to explain our understanding of overlap between different neurodiverse conditions through our research and by speaking to neurodiverse participants. These insights had helped us develop and use ‘perspectives’ as opposed to ‘diagnoses’ or ‘conditions’ as a way of understanding and talking about neurodiverse needs without labels. This created a common language for all participants to empathise and understand the mindset needed when designing for neurodivergent users. Immediately after the perspectives show and tell we broke up into separate groups and jumped into our ‘BBC Meta News’ co-creation workshop.
By now our workshop had been designed to be as smooth as possible with the simplest of directions and facilitation plus a reduced amount of equipment. Instead of white boards everyone was handed a sheet of A3 paper with a lightly printed curved grid screen (and a BBC Meta News logo) on which to imagine and sketch their interpretation of a news story with the news theme being ‘climate change’. The basic printed grid design combined with the first instruction ‘sketch your own avatar’ broke the ice so to speak helping negate ‘writers block’. Seeing other people draw can act as a prompt too! This was all considered and designed in order to create a smoother workshop experience. Open-ended prompts like “what can you hear” and ”where can you go” were both said aloud and printed out on the table to keep the facilitation minimal and accessible. After 7 minutes of silent ideating and doodling each person spoke about their sketches and reflected on their thought process to the rest of their group. They shared with each other how and why they had personalised their experience plus what other options might be important to them.
All attendees were then asked to come together in one large gathering to see all the individual sketches presented upon a wall next to each other. It was at this point we re-introduced the concept of perspectives, asking if anyone had considered the aforementioned perspective characteristics when designing their BBC Meta News experience? Everyone answered “no”, shook their heads or at least looked confused. This was an intended provocation aiming to show that although they had created something unique, their design might not work for others, especially someone who was neurodivergent. It was an ‘aha moment’ to help tie all the previous stages of the whole experience together. We explained that as designers it's a challenge to design for others and that a method to mitigate this and the bias that goes along with it, is to use co-creation as a tool.
We concluded our presentation with the insights deck pinpointing potential opportunities based on our own research with participants using the co-creation workshops:
Guided Navigation: curated route to follow / shortcuts for self curation / focus tool options / ability to easily end the experience
Wellbeing Monitor: sensitivity rating / time monitoring / dopamine tank / break notification
Immersive Space for Dialogue: camera angle options / interaction tools & limits / debate moderators / customisable interaction ‘rooms’
My responsibilities:
For the project my responsibilities ranged from: interviewing individuals employed at charities catering for neurodiverse needs / carrying out quick Q&A research with younger audiences from the public / contributing with team members using tools such as ‘planning cycle’ and ‘red ant man’ / being proactive with prototyping and iterating our initial workshop designs / leading group decision making to move us forward as a team
For the presentation I helped with designing the flow and staging of the overall presentation / using existing skills to create an immersive projected video experience / delivered and facilitated a workshop with some of the participants / presented the findings from all the workshops to all participants
Impact
Although impact can be subjective, our final workshops delivered during the presentation highlighted how different everyone's individual vision was, therefore showing that a co-creation mindset and process is needed to create a truly personalizable product. Sometimes ‘impact’ can also be personal; I personally learned how using inclusive design as a foundation made me more aware of mine and others' biases, assumptions and blind spots, helping me to grow as a designer.
Tools:
user interviews / synthesising / red ant man / the planning cycle / low-fidelity prototyping (white board vs paper vs digital) / performance & role play / sketching / AB testing / co-creation /
Team members:
Meha Hindocha - Illustrator & Artist
Preksha Chandra - UX Designer
Amanda Liedberg - NGO Manager
Oliver Holt - Motion Designer
