VisioSphere

Introduction

• In today’s world, the readership for articles has been on a constant decline (63% since 2017 ; “Sharp decline in appetite for news in recent years” - Reuters Institute [2]). Our research, both online and from in-person studies, found that people are opting for shorter-form content that focuses on visuals over written content. Users are inundated with information when reading articles leading to ‘doom-scrolling’ & burnout, especially when it comes to understanding and digesting endless statistics and data. We focussed on the domain of environmental articles & climate anxiety as a starting point. 
• SPACE OUT proudly presents to VisioSphere: a critical design think piece & versatile tool that transforms environmental data into immersive visualisations, accessible through our web platform. Our aim is to help news platforms and educational organisations increase viewership and engagement significantly by providing this unique tool to experience their content in a creative way. 

What it does

• When a user is doom scrolling through an article, users can hit the panic button and be transported to a digital environment that they can customise. 
• The platform converts the statistics from the article to real time data changes in the built up environment. This is a feature to help visualise data in a safe space and also connect with the data on a personal level. 
• VisioSphere allows the users to customise their own unique digital environments. Data contained within articles from sites such as the BBC and the Guardian will be spatialized for the viewer, allowing previously overwhelming numbers to contain real value to the user. 
• The percentage of environmental destruction written about in news articles will be enacted in the user’s own custom digital environment. Trees being destroyed by wildfires for example will be visualised for the user in their customised  world. For example, if an article speaks about how 80 percent of the forest has been cut down, the user would experience it in their own environment to help conceptualise the damage as users are increasingly desensitised to environmental destruction. 
• Through the emotional attachment the user creates when customising their landscape, the end result will be an increased drive to positive climate action. Users will be presented with the option of donating to an appropriate charity. - Once a donation has been made, the user will see some form of ecological recovery enacted in their landscape, reforestation for example. 

Commercial Viability

• Key Competitors: Existing data visualisation tools and VR applications within educational and publishing sectors. Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Customisable VR Worlds: Users can create personalised virtual environments reflecting data impacts.
• Emotional Connection: Enhancing reader empathy and understanding through immersive experiences tied to real-world data.
• Cross-domain Applicability: Scalable beyond environmental topics to various domains like healthcare, education, and corporate training.

Revenue Model

• Potential revenue sharing models with partnering with large content publishers such as the BBC based on engagement metrics. 

Pricing Strategy:

• Tiered pricing based on features and usage levels. Competitive pricing reflecting value-added from VR immersion. For example, 318 Million people read BBC articles weekly a small percentage of 5% is what we would hope to negotiate. 

Challenges we ran into

• Initially found the commercial viability of this tool quite difficult as we intended it to be a creative design thinking piece finding a way to make complex and overwhelming internet experiences more palatable for users by providing a controlled digital environment.
• Simplifying our very conceptual, wacky idea. Our initial idea to literally transport users to a safe place had to be scaled back to our end product, an immersive digital environment. The process of working through our ideas of how the product could work had to be achieved and streamlined within a short period of time. 

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• We are proud of working collaboratively and productively as a small team of 3 and producing a viable idea, we celebrate the small wins here!
• Building up the digital environment using a new software Blender 
• Surviving the hack, meeting lots of new people and piecing together a creative idea 
• Building our respective portfolios with a project we’re exceptionally proud of
• Regardless of our relative inexperience in software engineering, we were able to produce a feasible idea that we were able to convey to the judging panel and Amplitude 

What we learned 

• Working collaboratively as an interdisciplinary team consisting of a (an architecture student, a mechanical engineer and a full-time student with a passion for coding!) and drawing upon our skills effectively.
• Delegating tasks according to strengths but also weaknesses to allow team members to learn and develop the skills
• The process of putting together a pitch, such as researching commercial viability, market research and ideation.
• Sharing our different skill sets to create a richer pool of knowledge between us, we’re all leaving the weekend with a stronger understanding of various skills within the tech industry 

Limitations

• A limiting factor would be payment options for users, so by marketing our product to companies both the company and SPACEOUT will benefit. 
• Misinformation - could alter the accuracy of our representations: so we need to build a trustability feature to sensitise sources.  

Next Steps Short Term:

• Integrating front-end, back-end and blender products all together. Medium Term:
• User testing and feedback and continuous improvement loop Long Term:
• Deployment and cross-domain applications
• Gaining business interest, marketing strategies
• Taking it to apps, games, VR head sets to increase the number of ways to experience our product

Thanks for taking the time to read our project, we hope you are as excited by it as we are!!!

Citations [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/world-is-on-verge-of-climate-abyss-un-warns  [2]  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65880999