Makeactive UK: an exploration of Virtual Reality Maker Spaces for multi-user, collaborative design at a distance

我们很幸运能够应对COVID-19带来的全球挑战，而此时科技可以大规模提供高保真、实时、视觉和听觉信息;“Zoom-call”对日常活动至关重要。远程工作的一个特殊挑战是当直接接触（无论是人与人之间还是通过共享的物体和空间）是一个重要组成部分时，无论是医疗，通信，教学还是设计。对于视障人士来说，许多方面的教育，如艺术和设计课程，完全是一个“动手”的活动。如果没有“可视化”创作的能力，以及视力受损的用户通过触摸和声音进行可视化，那么分享和交流设计想法几乎是不可能的。这意味着，在一个完全视听的在线世界中，没有为视障人士提供需要与2D或3D设计过程共享和合作的教育，有效地切断了这个社区从在线数字互动中获得的好处，而教育系统中的其他人认为这是理所当然的。事实上，现在的变化速度如此之快，传统的面对面协作教育空间正在完全消失。我们相信有机会利用最先进的沉浸式触觉（触摸）技术来解决其他领域的挑战，例如教育和创意产业，并将其应用于创建触摸功能，在线数字“创客空间”旨在为远程学习者提供一个全新的艺术、手工艺、设计该项目将通过与来自视力受损和创意设计界的广泛利益攸关方密切合作，为应对这一重大而关键的挑战奠定基础。通过这个项目，我们可以更好地了解他们当前的行为，以及他们的需求如何映射到在线的数字对等物上。我们将通过采用现有的、经过验证的技术堆栈来平衡这种主观的方法和对实用性的更客观的调查，该技术堆栈被用于实验共享的、具有实时触摸反馈的交互，并对其进行充分的调整，以使设计师能够体验到什么是协作，在线3D触摸-我们将联合收割机结合这两条线，形成一个清晰的战略理解，向前迈进，并解决令人兴奋的，但实质性的开放数字协作体验的挑战，不仅仅是视力受损的人，而是任何能够从互联网中受益的设计从业者，在互联网中，触摸不如今天的视觉和声音那么好。

We are fortunate to be tackling the global challenge that COVID-19 presents at a time when technology can provide high-fidelity, real-time, visual, and auditory information at scale; the 'Zoom-call' is essential to daily activity. A particular challenge of remote working is collaborating when direct touch -- either between people or via shared objects and spaces -- is an essential component, whether for medicine, communication, teaching, or design. For the sight-impaired community, many aspects of education, such as art and design courses, are exclusively a "hand's-on" activity. Sharing and communicating design ideas is almost impossible without the ability to "visualize" the creation and for the sight-impaired user to visualize through touch and sound. This means, that in an exclusively audio-visual online world, there is no provision for the sight-impaired to access education which requires sharing and collaborating with 2D or 3D design process, effectively cutting this community off from the benefits of online, digital interaction, that others in the education system take for granted. Indeed, the pace of change is so fast now, traditional, in-person collaborative education spaces are disappearing altogether.We believe there is the opportunity to take state of the art immersive, haptic (touch) technologies to solve challenges in other domains e.g. education and the creative industries, and apply them to create touch-enabled, online digital "maker spaces" aimed at provisioning remote learners with an entirely new platform for education in the disciplines of arts, crafts, design, and engineering.This project will lay the groundwork for addressing this substantial but crucial challenge by working closely with a broad range of stakeholders from the sight-impaired and creative design communities. From this project, we can better understand their current behaviors and how their needs would map onto an online, digital equivalent. We will balance this subjective approach with a more objective investigation into the practicalities by taking an existing, proven technology stack that is being used to experiment with shared, interaction with real-time touch feedback and adjusting it sufficiently to allow designers to experience what a collaborative, online 3D touch-enabled design space might be like.We will combine these two strands to form a clear understanding of a strategy to go forward and address the exciting but substantial challenge of opening the digital collaborative experience, not just the sight-impaired, but any design practitioner who would benefit from the internet where touch is not as well provisioned as sight and sound today.