Imagine the following scenario.

You’re designing a virtual reality experience. Your work needs to be top-notch, transcendent and inspiring. You’re creating it to make a huge difference in someone’s life, amid stressful circumstances.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

And your project must be ready for viewing, ten weeks from today.

That’s exactly what multiple award-winning new-media artist and VR evangelist Teri Yarbrow has been doing, with her “VR for Good” class at Savannah College of Art and Design.

Working in collaboration with Hospice of Savannah, Teri and her students design virtual reality experiences for patients in both hospice and palliative care.

Teri is the founder and creative director of MagikaVRX in Savannah, as well as the co-founder and creative director of design company Magika. She is also Professor of Digital Media and Immersive Reality at SCAD. And observations from her immersive-media students were the genesis of her “VR for Good” class, which Teri implemented in 2020.

And they did it all in Zoom, for that first class.

Collaboration and inspiration

With the pandemic forcing them to work remotely, Teri and her students first researched what patients would most like to experience.

Then, they designed three different VR projects.

Their work gave patients the opportunity to travel to locations they’d said they’d like to experience, but were physically no longer able to do so. Patients (and some of their family members and caregivers) put on a headset and had the opportunity for an adventure that brought them joy–and peace.

“I felt like technology could be such a powerful force for good,” Teri says, recalling one pivotal moment during the creative process.

Currently, Teri is in her third year of teaching her “VR for Good” class. She and her students will shortly wrap up the semester by taking their new, and breathtaking, experiences to patients and their families.

Teri shared the story of her VR for Good class, offered a closer look at some of the experiences her students have created and shared her vision for what’s next.

On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:

• How Teri first became aware of virtual reality as a creative medium;

• How her VR for Good class came about;

• What students will be doing, as the ten-week session starts;

• Teri’s most memorable experience, from teaching “VR for Good” for the first time;

• One patient’s response to one of the experiences the class produced;

• A look at the projects which the current class is developing;

• Some of the creative lessions Teri learned from teaching her new class;

• How she’d most like to expand the work of her VR for Good class in the future.