Team:NRP-UEA-Norwich/Practices/OpenDay
HUMAN PRACTICES
On the 10th of September UEA had their annual Open Day. We saw this opportunity to not only tell potential students about iGEM but to also test out our Virtual Reality (VR). On the day we showcased our poster and revealed our VR animation.
Our motive behind using VR as a visual learning tool stems from the difficulties in explaining molecular biology to the general public. We noticed this ourselves while studying and it became more prominent when explaining GFP or RFP bacteria to the children from the SCVA. With the new releases in technology i.e. VR, we came up with the idea to use this to show individuals what a cell looks like from the inside. Specifically, we could make a VR model to show what our project is specifically aiming to do.
The animation would show our protein complex and even give the individual a first person- or rather “electrons”-perspective of the complex. Throughout the day we got many keen visitors to try it out. Many were impressed, a few disorientated and even one or two who got a bit frightened by the experience. This was something we noted down for future trials, to add a little disclaimer before giving it to participant. However, the general consensus that we got was that this was a great way to interact with individuals to explain molecular biology. As we tailored it specifically to our project, it explained our intentions more succinctly than a poster or presentation would. Other feedback we received were small glitches i.e. blurry text, which we have then improved upon.
The open day was a great opportunity to iron out some small details that we had with our VR model. We have worked on it since then to only make it better for the Science in Norwich Festival in October before flying off to Boston for the final showcase.
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