UX of VR Body Mapping
About:
The Changemakers of London College of Communication are higher education consultants who partners with students and staffs to co-design a decolonial and anti-racist curiculum.
Challenge:
To design a self reflection tool that enables changemakers to express the emotional depth of their social justice work.
Impact:
The body mapping experience left participants feeling emotionally grounded and more connected to the deeper motivations behind their changemaking work.
Client:
Changemakers, London College of Communication
My role:
User Research Usability Testing
Timeline:
Feb 2025 - present
Research Question:
How can we create a self-reflection tool that enables changemakers to express and process the emotional impact of their social justice work?
Reflective Prompt Design
Understanding Changemaker work
Theme coding changemaker job description
Mind mapping important aspects of the job
Prompt Design
What was your experience like engaging with the theme of social and racial justice through your project?
What emotions arose for you throughout the process of your project - before, during, and after?
What aspects felt easy, and what parts felt challenging? Why?
How have your identity and lived experiences influenced the process?
Research Question:
How might we create a safe and supportive space for changemakers to engage in deep self-reflection, acknowledging the emotional weight of their work?
Methods of Reflection
Testing
2 participants
1 hour
London College of Communication
Test different reflection methods to identify the most effective approach to engage with these prompts.
Conversations
Writing
Body Mapping
Logic:
The participants converse with each other about their project, answering the prompts in the process.
Observation:
The participant spent a long time explaining the context of the project.
Limitation:
Instead of helping changemaker situate himself within the evaluation, time was spent to contextualise the various learnings, experiences, thoughts around the project for the sake of the listeners.
Insights from Body Mapping
A realisation that much of his thoughts are driven by logic, with minimal involvement of the heart, perhaps as a way to protect himself from the deeper impact of the experience.
The full diaphram shows the stress held during the project while the sighs implies how the body mapping has been a cathartic experience.
Limitation
The participants also identified external factors that affect them which could not be mapped in the body.
Added spaces around the body allowing participants to explore external factors in their reflection.
Exploration of factors like collaboration, time, resources etc. and their connection with participants' embodiment.
Testing Body Mapping
Testing
6 participants
40 mins
London College of Communication
Utilsing body mapping as a method to reflect on changemaker work
Task:
The prompts were provided in no particular order and participants were asked to respond to the prompts by visualising their emotions in the body.
Observation:
Participants shared that they had the opportunity to visualize their experiences, express their perspectives, and gain new insights through the process.
Limitation
Participants noted limitations such as the two-dimensional format, which makes it difficult to represent both the front and back of the body.
Insight
Body mapping acted as a tool to translate lived experiences into powerful visual narratives, strengthening advocacy and communication.
Limitations
1.
Difficult to represent the full complexity of human experiences, including movement, depth, and both front/back perspectives.
2.
Can surface deep emotions or trauma, necessitating careful facilitation and psychological safety.
Research Question:
How might we design an immersive 3D experience that enables changemakers to explore deeper insights while maintaining the privacy of personal experiences?
VR Body Mapping
Quick sketch for prototyping
Prototyped using Open source codes. Credits: Jiayi Wu
Body Mapping
Testing VR Body Mapping
Usability Testing
3 Participants
30 minutes
London College of Communication
Task : Use VR painting to create an immersive body map that reflects your emotional experiences and involvement in your social justice work.
Observation:
Participants were excited to engage with VR over 2D body mapping experience.
Limitation:
Some time is needed to get used to the controls and tools, which can disrupt flow or emotional focus.
Task success:
The 3D environment encouraged multi-layered expression (e.g., layering emotions, timelines, or internal vs. external struggles).
3 key areas to analyse user painpoints
1.
Interactions
2.
Environment
3.
Journey
Analysing interactions
The inclusion of long-form reading disrupted the immersive quality of the experience, suggesting a need for more intuitive, visual, or auditory ways to communicate context.
Typing in VR felt unnatural and tough and broke the flow of the session; participants preferred more intuitive, non-verbal forms of expression.
Participants experimented with depth and layering to express themselves; but the lack of spatial boundaries sometimes caused confusion about whether they were painting inside or outside the body form.
Participant is showcasing fire in their guts; but the physical placement of prompts outside their immediate viewport disrupted immersion and made it harder to stay engaged in the experience.
Areas of Improvement
1.
Improve spatial clarity and to reduce confusion.
2.
Test audio based experience for prompts.
3.
Guided onboarding or warm up to establish context.
4.
Visual or haptic feedback, to communicate boundaries.
5.
Emotion based textures, colors to express better.
Analysing the Environment
Interview
3 Participants
1.5 hours
London College of Communication
Interview Analysis of user painpoints regarding the physical and virtual environment of the experience
Recommended VR Environment Moodboard
Balances introspective depth (purple) with energetic self-expression and transformation (orange), promoting a reflective yet empowering space for emotional exploration.
User Journey Mapping
Mapping the actions and emotions of participants across the VR experience.
Process stage:
Waiting for application outcome of Racial, Social and Climate Justice (CSR) Fund at LCC.
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