Undergraduate Research Report: Xiaowen Yuan on Immersive Virtual Environments
We're so pleased to provide undergraduate research opportunities! Xiaowen Yuan worked with Haripriya Sathyanarayanan on a project based on virtual reality and built environment design. From Xiaowen:
During the fellowship, I’ve gained a lot of valuable experience in design and research. My mentor Haripriya gave me a valuable opportunity to help her with a project based on virtual reality and built environment design. Throughout the semester, we set up building models in virtual environments, finalized experiment procedures, conducted pilot studies and recruited participants for final study. From the pilot study, we gained insights about users’ cognitive and physical responses to different environments. We then modified our data collection procedure slightly and prepared for final data collection. In the meantime, we started to conduct literature review and position our project in the broader landscape of healthcare design using virtual reality. I learned a lot from all these experiences. I have a deeper understanding of experiment design and quantitative data analysis procedure. I learned the theoretical foundations of virtual reality applications — their promises and limitations. I also realized the importance of communication, collaboration, and time management. Lastly, I want to thank Haripriya for her understanding and mentorship.