Studio 39: A Virtual Reality Learning Environment

The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and digital studio ISOdesign have successfully completed an interdisciplinary pilot project funded by the AHRC's call on 'Next Generation of Immersive Experiences'. Our main outputs from this project were an initial set of design guidelines for immersive experiences in the museum sector and an AR and VR experience based on the history of the GSA's Laocoon plastercast statue that was designed and developed using these guidelines. These AR and VR experiences will be demonstrated at the AHRC showcase event at the University of York in December 2018 and at Europe's premier AR/VR conference - EuroVR in London in October 2018. In addition, we will be presenting our findings and demonstrating our AR and VR experiences at the symposium: Intangible Matters: Mackintosh, Authenticity and Conservation in Glasgow in October 2018.

We now wish to extend the work and outcomes of this first project by engaging in a series of dissemination and impact activities around our concept of a virtual learning environment: Studio 39. The aim of Studio 39 is to allow distinct user groups such as art students, school children, visitors to galleries and museums the opportunity to "deep dive" into content rich immersive virtual environments using a range of archival assets such as 3D object scans, videos, images and digital documents. These activities are based on the central aims of designing and evaluating a proof-of-concept Studio 39 virtual learning environment and explore new business models and potential revenue streams from this type of application in art and design education (tertiary and secondary school) and wider audience engagement for cultural institutions.

Who might benefit from this research?
Multiple parties will benefit from the research, including professionals in the VR/AR/Immersive sector, industry professionals in management/promotion/exhibition roles in the heritage and cultural sector, academic staff in HEI's looking at immersive technologies for teaching and research purposes, non-academic user-groups including children, adult heritage and cultural visitors. This is an overview of potential beneficiaries, and how they will benefit from our research:
Academic beneficiaries:
This follow-on research will take a cross-disciplinary approach and will benefit academic researchers within the fields of design, heritage, exhibitions and diverse facets within the area of digital technology, specifically AR & VR content development.
Non-Academic Beneficiaries:
Non-academic beneficiaries of this research will include professionals in the VR/AR/Immersive sector, industry professionals in the design sector, industry professionals in management/promotion/exhibition roles in the culture and heritage sector, user-groups including children, adult heritage and cultural visitors. Further details of how these groups will be engaged with to ensure impact can be found in the Pathways to Impact attachment
How might they benefit from this research
Adult heritage/museum/cultural visitors and users: Our proposed research aims to open up immersive experiences for 'general users' through overcoming obstacles and potential barriers to the use, exploitation and scaling up of research outputs in the VR/AR/Immersive world. In essence, removing industry obstacles (e.g. not appreciating the importance adopting a user-centred design approach to developing immersive experiences) and developing knowledge through enhancing our initial set of design guidelines from the first project to allow heritage professionals to more easily utilise the technology, will bring VR/AR immersive experiences to the fore for a general audience to engage with, enjoy and be inspired by.
Children:and schoolteachers This project's specific user-testing with children (and teachers) in stage 4: engagement and evaluation activities (please see case for support), considers the unique requirements for children in terms of qualitative issues such as engagement with cultural and heritage narrative in different ways in. Especially as the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland has a key theme of teaching schoolchildren about the importance of cultural heritage and where Scottish cultural heritage sits in an international context. This follow-on research will benefit this group (and can be extended to schoolchildren across the UK) with regard to these specific learning requirements of the curriculum and aims to open up the learning experience of children in an engaging, accessible, safe way.
Design Industry professionals: Enhancing the design guidelines we developed in the first project and putting forward a potential business model as an outcome from this project our dissemination and impact activities will show national and international parties involved with this technology how to overcome and better understand the complexities involved in creating and deploying AR/VR/Immersive experiences. Thus providing a framework to allow it to be exploited more widely amongst their audiences.
Industry; culture and heritage professionals: We will undertake further consultation and user-testing with Museum designers, Visitor experience operators, Exhibitions staff and Heritage and Culture Managers in the context of this group being end-users, key stakeholders and influencers and the project will benefit them through research into delivering a more practical and considered way of deploying Immersive experiences in a real-life environment.