W.P. Coffee VR
Environmental Redesign
Overview
Background
W.P. Coffee is a part of a series of Dreamscape Flow immersive classroom experiences that teach students supply management skills and operational capacity. Students were to sit in Dreamscape Pods and transport into a café, named W.P. Coffee, and experience how several factors such as time, employees, and resources affect the operations of the café. The original design had the students sitting at desks within the café since the students have virtual tablets in front of them in order to participate within the simulation. However, user feedback revealed a severe student disconnect from the scenario because of their surroundings in VR.
I joined the project towards the end during its final prototypes. The redesign to the environment needed to maintain the functionalities of the virtual tablets located at the desks and the art direction of the café had already been decided. All solutions needed to keep in mind the existing style and features of the experience.
Methodologies
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User Testing
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Session Observation
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User Surveys
Redesign Goal: Increase student immersion inside W.P. Coffee by redesigning the café to feel more realistic to modern day coffee shops while still maintaining core functionalities and art direction.
Scope: 2 months, October 2023 - December 2023
Role: UX researcher, Layout artist, Concept artist
Toolkit: Procreate, Unity, Google Sheets, Google Docs
Researching the Problems
Current State
User testing and surveys revealed a couple of core issues with the experience in terms of immersion and difficulty with UI interactions.
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While users found the scenario engaging, in comparison to other experiences, W.P. Coffee was rated lower in terms of quality and immersion
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Concerns were voiced that the coffee shop resembled more an office since there was little space for customers within the space with all the desks in the way
Source: W.P. Coffee initial gray box layout (2022)
Observing the students using the experience revealed problems through physical discomfort related to how the students were seated and interacting with the environment
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The UI lagged, was blurry, and was difficult to interact with in general as it was resting directly on top of the desk, meaning students needed to lean their head forward with heavy gear on their face to use the interface
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Students had a hard time seeing past their classmates in VR since the professor stands at the front and the students sit in linear rows
Source: W.P. Carey I.C. SCM Pilot Fall Report (2023)
Proposing Rearrangments
Interior Design
The current state of the coffee shop was warm, however, the set up of the desks and their style did not match the same cozy feeling. Coffee shops are known to be inviting, comforting, and a source of relaxation and focus for many people. Many of these college students surely had their own experiences studying at the various coffee shops surrounding Arizona State University (where this experience is being implemented). Therefore, it was important to revamp the layout inside the café and replace some assets to match the modern coffee shop aesthetic.
The desks and chairs for the students completely clash with the rest of the aesthetics surrounding the area. The art direction for the general environment was concrete, but the students' immediate space did not match.
The goal then is to redesign how and where the students sit while also adjusting where their UI appears since it originally displayed flat on the desk.
Source: W.P. Coffee Unity project (March 2023)
Concept Art - Redesigning the Layout
This concept art proposed removing the desk and chairs the students presently had and replacing them with traditional café furniture that was already in the scene, could be created, or could be acquired. This way, students felt more comfortable in the simulation, feeling as if they have settled down to study with friends inside a coffee shop near the campus rather than being sat inside a classroom. This would also stagger the students at various heights using different table and seat heights to avoid issues with seeing past classmates.
The tablets would be raised at an angle in front of the users like an iPad locked in with a magnetic keyboard. This way, users need to just glance down with their eyes rather than use their whole head to view and interact. It would also not obscure the professor.
The image on the side displays a simple layout where the students would sit within the café:
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Four students at the high top table in the middle
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Four students at the tables to the right side
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Two students at the bench along the right wall
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Two students in low lounge chairs towards the front
Designing and Prototyping
Testing out Layouts
After talking with the art team, we created and acquired additional assets that matched the current cafe's existing furniture, lighting, and color scheme to assemble the initial proposed layout.
From here, we continued iterating - testing, rearranging, testing, rearranging - until we settled on a seating chart that made the most sense and felt the most comfortable to the users.
Final Design and Iterations
Iteration - Version 1
The first version of the layout most mimicked the original concept drawing. It spaced out the seating, added more café chairs, lounge chairs, table variations, and opened the floor to allow room for more customer NPCs. This still left space for the professor standing at the front of the classroom, and it matched more traditional coffee shops around campus. The tablets in front of them rather than on the table were a success.
Why was it changed: The addition of white as a texture for some furniture was critiqued by stakeholders to feel too bright, especially in the VR setting. Those sitting at the high top felt too far away in comparison to the rest of the users closer up front.
Iteration - Version 2
The second version changed some textures and pushed seating into different angles while moving them closer together.
Why was it changed: The users sitting along the wall and to the right side at the tables felt separated from the classmates sitting in the center of the classroom in the lounge chairs and high tops.
Final Design - Version 3
In the final design, we chose to sit students closer together, that way users would have at least two others in proximity to themselves at any given time in case they require assistance or need to complete a group activity.
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Five students sit along the window
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Three students sit up front
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Four students sit at the high tops
The seats were pushed closer together and moved up towards the front of the café.
Now, students feel a sense of community, can easily access their UI tablets, and feel as if they are customers within a café instead of students observing for a class. Stakeholders reacted favorably to this redesign, and it is currently the version used inside of classrooms.
Conclusion
W.P. Coffee shows the importance of a user's surroundings in virtual reality and how quickly the immersion can be broken when the environment fails to meet their expectations for the present scenario. Of course, the students in this case are using the simulation as supplemental class material. Their professor controls the simulation, and they have discussions. In theory, placing a classroom within the coffee shop makes sense - they're still actively in a learning environment.
However, it is incredibly important to take into consideration how much more engaged people become when they have fun. When the students can suspend their sense of reality for a few moments and feel as if they are on a field trip, learning in an outside environment, they're more likely to pay attention to what is happening around them. According to research, students show improvement in the classroom when using virtual reality materials due to cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, and affective engagement. The lessons become more memorable simply because the lessons have become fun and interactive.
This is why it's important to take the time to polish VR environments in scenarios to make sure the users, especially in an educational setting, can continue suspending their reality for the time they're completing an experience. Any sort of hiccups can genuinely pull someone out of their enjoyment - and in this case, it could severely impact how these students grasp onto material during their undergraduate studies.
Source: VR helps students learn about supply chain management, Arizona State University, Molly Loonam (March 2024)