2019-2020
In close collaboration with the Red Cross Lower Austria we developed a VR training application to simulate a highway accident with multiple injured people.
When large accidents with multiple injured people happen, the emergency staff need to have strong organisational skills in addition to medical knowledge.
Currently, it is very expensive for the Red Cross to have members practice these skills, because they need to set up elaborate training scenarios. We created such a scenario in virtual reality to see if people have the same learning effect as with the costly real training. During real emergencies Red Cross members communicate a lot with the control center to give information about the number and condition of patients. This is important to estimate the number of emergency vehicles needed. Allowing users to practice this part was very important for the project but proved a challenge.
I was mainly responsible for the visual design of the virtual environment.
My tasks included:- searching and evaluating of suitable 3D Assets
– creating custom assets
– retexturing and editing of purchased assets
– overall composition of the scenes (tutorial and highway setting)
Further responsibilities:
– designing the User Interface
– Close coordination within the team and the Red Cross Lower Austria
– preparing and conducting user tests
Overall, the application was very well received and testers commented positively about their learning experience.
Testing revealed issues regarding movement and interaction with the triage tag. Reading in VR proved challenging (people just ignored the instruction), we tackled the issue by having a computer read the tutorial texts to the user. Users reported that having the instructions read to them, helped them to better understand what their tasks were, as they could look at the controllers, environment, etc. while hearing the instructions.
Communication between the user in VR and someone from the Red Cross who took the part of the control center proved difficult. The Red Cross didn’t want this part to be scripted, so there always has to be a member of the Red Cross who talks to the user in the role of the control center.
Since the VR user has a headset on, users reported that they could barely hear what the other person was saying. To fix this, we gave the “control center” a microphone and used the VR Headset as output so the user could hear both, the application and the other person.
Team: Alisa Feldhofer
Angelika Weiler and Bernhard Bünger (Red Cross Lower Austria)