Exploring situated empathy through a metaverse campus

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) is promising in communicating people’s hardship experiences in simulated situations. This can help foster empathy among people. In this paper, we present a VR experience designed to showcase the hardship experiences of an international higher education community concerning their studies and lives in an unfamiliar neighborhood. We collected hardship stories and data from 40 members of the community through an online questionnaire. The questionnaire analysis led to understanding critical issues, such as social problems, language barriers, issues with bureaucracy, and racism. We then turned the issues into interactive stories in VR. We recruited 18 participants to experience the hardship stories through interactions with avatars in a VR version of the campus where the community is located. Our preliminary results from the questionnaires suggest that the participants’ knowledge and tendency to willingness to discuss the hardships improved due to participating in the experience. Further, our semi-structured interviews reflect positively on the VR experience’s memorability, the stories’ plausibility and participants’ increased situated empathy and awareness regarding the hardships of the local international community. This early exploration informs future studies focusing on situated empathy.