Jeremy Silver and Jeremy Bailenson on 'Experience on Demand'
In conversation: Jeremy Silver and Jeremy Bailenson on 'Experience on Demand' https://www.digitalcatapultcentre.org.uk/event/in-conversation-with-jeremy-bailenson-and-jeremy-silver/
Welcome to Digital Catapult - we're partly funded by government, partly by business - we're here to encourage the early adoption of advanced digital technologies, and tonight it is immersive video and VR
we've been investing in immersive technology over the last few years @BecGC has been leading this here
we have a lab here that is a showcase for the technology and for the projects that have built these kind of projects - lodon, belfast, gateshead and more
we have also set up a volumetric capture studio in Wimbledon at https://www.dimensionstudio.co/ that digitises real actors
Jeremy Bailenson founded the VR lab at Stanford in 2003 to explore Virtual/Human interaction - he wrote a book called Infinite Reality and his new book is Experience on Demand
we look at VR and AR and AR on mobile - where is it going?
I have no answers for what's winning in the Valley - watching the crazed consumer revolution come and go, nobody knows what will win out
the companies that are still surviving is the ones that use technology to chase the problem
start with a problem that needs to be solved, if VR or AR helps to solve it, great. Don't use the technology for the sake of it
The big companies began with the premise that people want to play games in VR, but people are now thinking of other applications
companies have learned that you can't play for 10 hours a day in VR - it can be too intense
the clearest theme that runs through the book is the power to increase empathy - you have been pioneering a different use here
we were funded to develop VR to do better diversity training - we based it on work in London labs - we made a virtual mirror that shows a different body that followsyour reflection
no medium causes empathy, it's what you do with it - VR will outperform video for empathy if you do it well
you have done a number of pieces where the viewer has the experience of someone very different from themsleves
we have one in our lab that give the experience of being homeless - to encourage people to have empathy and changing mindsets
Becoming Homeless is a piece we were challenged to do by the Robert Wood Johnson foundation - to see if empathy transferred for broader than just undergraduates
we have a large sample - over 3000 people and a broader range of people to try the experience
we designed control conditions designed to outperform VR, and looked at behaviour over time - looking 2 months after the experience
the goal was to reverse the fundamental attribution error - when things happen to us it's about the situation; for others it is about character
when we end the experience we get people to sign a petition "I am willing to have my taxes raised to help the homeless" - and this still seems to apply 2 months later
there have only been a few studies that look a day or 2 out, not a month ot
Mel Stevenson has been working in Barcelona with the Ministry of Justice, working with the perpetrators of domestic abuse to simulate them being subject to it -the recidivism goes down 30% compared to control
The more we see of that evidence, the more we can think about tools that create lasting value
the reason why we can posit that it creates an effect - walking VR, fully immersive , people respond to them as if they were real
we should begin with the assumption that VR is an actual experience, and plan on that basis
we wrote a chapter on the Dark side of VR - we moved it to Chapter 2 so it would come through. The reviewers seemed to not see this and accuse me of being too optimisitic
how do we make sure VR doesn't get dragged down with the social media quagmire?
you have a very strict rule of no more than 20 minutes exposure - we're used to the idea of long form being the ideal
I have yet to find a VR experience that can last longer than 20 minutes - take them, off touch a wall talk to a person
I think VR is amazing for special experience - it's not for reading email and doing social media
the corporate business plan wants us to be in it all the time, like Ready Player One
That's not my vision - the people stumbling on it anew are bringing the media template of many hours a day - the lightfield approach tries to make it more comfortable
i was very struck when I read the book by your recurrent refrain of warning - does that need some kind of regulation?
I have been talking to US lawmakers and their ideas of VR - I'm not for regulation, and for free speech - the FCC said it's not their jurisdiction
Zuckerberg went through this big experience in front of congress, and did any laws change?
if you think about AR and mixed reality is that less overwhelming?
VR is complete mental transplantation; for AR it is more about augmentation and distraction
nowadays it seems if people can't really walk unless their thumbs are moving. one of the google founders said that Google Glass meant he could finally lift his head up at parties
is the hazard less with AR?
The hazard is different - they show demos liek repairing sinks, but in practice they play Pokemon Go
I want VR devices to turn off if you are going 3 miles per hour or more
you didn't think people would play Pokemon Go while driving cars, but they did
I talk on the phone while driving; I know I am distracted. 9 people per day are killed by drivers on their phone
lets use this as a moment - I don't want to hear about passengers and driverless cars - I want VR not to work in a moving car
Training is a good use case. I was asked if we coudl use VR to train athletes - we built a simulator to train quarterbacks
when the quarterback goes to the line he has about 3 seconds to change the play based on the defence. We simulated this in goggles
Derek set up a startup called Striver which sold this training to many sports teams - I'm a co-founder and we now have 75 employees
Walmart is based in Arkansas and saw the American Football training - we have a Black Friday Rush simulation for them
Walmart has training academies for employees - we found that the VR trainign helped. We then paired 30 stores with VR training and 30 not - it showed better.
we have trained over 200,000 welmart employees using VRin the last 12 months
we simulate a flooded basement with mould everywhere for an insurance company called Nationwide to train claims people
with the traiining we are mostly doing capture with 360 video rather than 3d simulation
we get people to try out the experience, and see how it affects people, and then go back and try a different approach
We work on vivid content - sensorially interesting - what do have that is beyond audio visual?
we just built a project based on smell - making a Vegan patty smell like a real beef one
we did a study where we tried people with a donut - half with a haptic donut, half with scent of a donut
we weren't sure if we would see satiation or priming, but we saw more satiation with virtual donuts
we originally overdid the smell in the smell study
people keep saying VR is a fad that will pass in 5 years
I wish social media would pass in 5 years
with mental health there is a home run use case - this is way mroe important than the gaming cases
we know from many published studies that people can be distracted from physical pain by VR - but hospitals don't offer it
we put researchers and doctors and pharma companies togetehr, and they want a 1000 patient study in a medical journal not a tech one
with PTSD research in the US, they can't get reimbursement from the VA
what were the most interesting ideas from the new interest in VR?
location based VR with passive haptics works very well when it is done right - walking through spider webs with string on your face
One of the simulations is called Hero where a helicoptor drops a bomb on a village you are in, and you pick up pieces of rubble - the tracking was off and I hit my face on a 2 by 4
i'm from Sheffield Hallam univeristy - most examples have been for VR users learning their own skills - what about carers for others - eg helps teachers take care of diabetics
a lot of academic research has looked at experiencing other people's journeys - difficult conversation generator
you have this difficult conversation, we record your audio and gestures, then you experience it from the point of view of the other person - what you were doing to them
Isabel from immersive rehab - we're dealing with regulatory trials - we use a fully immersive Vive - what is coming standalone?
for us $400 for the HTC Vive is a dream price compared to the $10,000 we are used to.
Stroke rehab is a great use case - please keep working on that. The standalone stuff I like - you don't have to set up cameras
the hololens you don't get the dizziness as much, but the inside out you can get some fuzzyness - always go for tracking accuracy
I'm Yasmin - I do training for implicit bias - how do we do longer term behaviour change?
I'm working wiht a bunch of investment bankers to try to make them nicer to women - how do you deal with that?
I'm tired of diversity training that ends with "aha I'm biased" - you want to teach them how to improve - eg show them a heat map of where they look comapared to a woman or a man
then you let them redo it and see how to do better.
we see people say somethign intensely inappropriate, then show them it and let them retry and improve it from the other point of view
Go outside and buy this book: Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0393253694/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_UUH4Ab86T23N
It's back! Calling #immersive startups in the UK...you can now sign up for the 2018 @DigiCatapult #Augmentor programme. Deadline 23rd May #VR #AR