Ayiana Crabtree

This is a blog post I wrote for the Studio X blog in April 2022. Full post available here. My goal in writing this particular blog post was to explore the ways that users perceive and interact with VR, and how that perception changes over time. I was inspired to write this post by my mother’s first reactions to trying my Oculus (now Meta) Quest 2 headset.

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I first encountered the idea of virtual reality (VR) when I read the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. As an avid reader of science fiction books, I loved the idea of being able to escape to some virtual world through a VR headset. Soon after I read the book, the movie was released, and seeing the concept executed in a visual form only increased my interest in the subject. Despite my fascination, I took it as the book genre labeled it. Fiction. I believed there were no VR headsets, as I had never seen or heard of anyone having them.

In the Fall of 2020, I learned I was wrong. I ordered my Oculus Quest 2, and I was over the moon upon its arrival. As I danced around my living room slashing to the beat of the songs of Beat Saber, my parents asked me what I was doing. I excitedly explained to them what VR was, and how it worked, and after a long tutorial, my parents tried VR for the first time. Since that initial experience, I made it an effort to introduce as many of my family members as I could to VR.

From having my mother and father try VR, I also got my Gran, Grandpa, and 96-year-old Great Grandma to try VR. They were all in awe at the videos I had them watch. It was their unique interactions that made me more and more interested in how others, beyond my family, might perceive the technology. I joined several VR-focused Facebook groups to see the kinds of conversations people were having about VR. I then decided to run a survey to directly ask the VR community about their experiences.

Below are some of my favorite quotes from the responses:

“At first, I thought it was super cool, but a little bit scary. As I’ve had more experience with VR games, I still think it is an awesome technology with a lot of potential uses, but I fear that VR video game violence will further desensitize users to violence in the real world. I was at an arcade once and played a VR zombie game and had to ask the worker to stop the game because it felt too much like I was killing real living things. Hence my fear of it desensitizing people to violence.”

Jenna, 21, Non-Binary

“I became so enthusiastic, it was fun, and I moved my body. I bought a headset and began to realize all the possibilities. I finally got my Quest2 in September and found Fitxr and SuperNatural. I have continued to use my quest 2 every day and have barely explored all the apps. My enthusiasm prompted five other sales among my friends as they noted my weight loss and toning of my body. I never thought that an old person could gain strength and balance. Just thought we went backwards physically. I had given away my cross-country skis and now wish I had them back as I have gained strength in my entire body. My balance has improved so much and although I have “bat wings” on one side of my arms I actually have muscle “bumps” on the other side. I can do step ups - more and more each week or so. I can do squats, as many as 40 at a time. Every day my muscles ache, but I LOVE IT as I realize it is a good ache and I earned it. The technology allows me to socialize with others, visit sites I had traveled to previously and brings back happy memories. The technology allows me not to travel to a gym (not that I would have) and to have privacy.”

Bonnie, 79+, F

“Early 90s I was hired by a Space Museum to consult on a VR exhibit and traveled to Boston, Chicago and LA to test drive early concepts. First experiences were so bad that I told the Space Museum to hold off on purchasing VR until it was more developed. Oculus Quest's first experience did not disappoint. My perceptions shift with the technology development, of course. I still see it in its infancy - it’s the Pong Era of VR meaning it sucks but we don’t realize it yet. It’s going to be 100 times better in 10 years. I was surprised by having a crush on a guy in Rec Room who played Paint Ball like he was a trained assassin. Crushes are a distant experience for me, so having one with only a voice and a cartoon avatar really surprised me. I think the safety of my anonymous state helped create an openness to flirting that’s not my normal way. It inspired me to wonder more about the potential for intimacy in VR - especially if these spaces were developed by women.”

Gnossos, 65, F

The quotes provided above shine a small spotlight on the many ways that people are being impacted by VR every day. From new ways of socializing to new methods of staying physically and mentally fit, VR has the ability to benefit everyone in some way shape or form due to its versatility. It is this social and emotional impact that allows VR to become so popular, as people feel directly connected to the experiences they are trying while in VR. The ever-present description of VR being the ultimate empathy machine is growing more and more accurate as the technology progresses and the range of possibilities expands.

Education from the sciences to the humanities, job training, interpersonal relationships, concerts, work meetings, all these fields can and are already benefiting from VR technologies. More and more people are being exposed to VR every day, and soon enough, it will become a household staple, much like cellphones and TVs. And why? Because of the ways we as users experience VR. It is the consumer perspective that shapes the industry, which is why it is so important to understand why people react the way they do to these technologies.

I personally believe that VR has shaped my perspectives on the world in ways I wouldn’t have been able to imagine due to some of the experiences I have tried. VR has opened my mind to new perspectives on personal space, human interaction, disabilities, and even the way I view myself as a person existing in the real world versus in the digital one.