Keep the Ball Rolling: Designing Game-Based Tangible VR for Spatial Penetrative Thinking Ability

PubDate: June 2019

Teams: Pennsylvania State University，Ryerson University，University of Toronto，Georgia Institute of Technology

Writers: Jack Shen-Kuen Chang；Alison Doucette；Georgina Yeboah；Timothy Welsh；Michael Nitsche；Ali Mazalek

PDF: Keep the Ball Rolling: Designing Game-Based Tangible VR for Spatial Penetrative Thinking Ability

Abstract

Spatial abilities are grounded in the way we interact with and understand the world through our physical body. However, existing spatial ability training materials are largely paper- or screen-based; they rarely engage or encourage the use of the body. Tangible and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies provide opportunities to re-imagine designing for spatial ability. We present a game-based system that combines embodiment in VR with tangible interfaces, and is designed around a specific spatial ability known as penetrative thinking. This spatial ability is the capacity to imagine the internal structure of objects based on external cues. This ability is important in areas like design, geosciences, medicine, and engineering. We describe the iterative design, implementation, and testing of our system, including the user study of the final design. The user evaluation results showed that participants had positive experiences when they solved the penetrative thinking puzzles in the tangible VR system.