Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) as Tools to Empower Vulnerable Communities: Opportunities and Challenges for Designers Chapter in Scopus uri icon

abstract

  • © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.In the Anthropocene complexity, information and technology play a transcendental role in how we relate to our identity, context and otherness. The already widespread AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) technologies allow to play, teach, train, or educate, presenting also the potentiality to make people empathize with other realities and to envision healthier social scenarios. With the aim to define the benefits of applying AR/VR technologies to design in vulnerable communities, this research analyses several cases studies, underlying their effects on social interactions. Since contemporary projects of applications to vulnerable communities are limited, this work studied cases applied to (1) vulnerable groups (The Machine to Be Another, Carne y Arena, and Autism Empathy Tools) and (2) local communities (Within, Mondly Lenguages VR, Spatial, Alspace VR). An analytical comparison between these two kinds of applications shows how the application of these technologies can bring to benefits in terms of empathy, identity and alterity applied to several fields of life: works, leisure, education and sociality. Nevertheless, the research¿s results are very clear in underlining how is extremely urgent to define a new narrative to efficiently represent the features of a vulnerable community.

publication date

  • January 1, 2022