Observations on Social Good Applications Created by New Developers

Abstract

With the advent of easily accessible VR technology, many new VR developers are creating their own experiences. In addition to experiences centered around gaming and entertainment, many of these new VR experiences are meant to improve the social good. However, not much is known about how new VR developers approach creating social good experiences. For example, how do new developers attempt to craft a narrative around their message in VR? To address these types of questions, we reflect on our experiences as facilitators for a VR course centered around social good experiences. The course gave students the opportunity to learn VR development, as well as real-world researchers and entrepreneurs a platform to get their VR ideas developed. We report here on our observations facilitating this group of mostly new VR developers and the trends we observed in the projects developed.