We built informative VR experiences to help workshop participants understand how body-based data is collected and used in the Metaverse.

The Metaverse provides designers and policy makers with many challenges. How designers responsibly request for consent to use, collect and then respond to body-based data is a significant one.

Supermarket was enlisted by Meta, in conjunction with design studio Craig Walker, to design a co-design workshop for external privacy and technology experts which explored the challenges and opportunities presented by the use of novel types of data in the metaverse, in particular body-based data. The output of this work to be a published report, privacy frameworks and design patterns which aim to support industry in developing people-centred and transparent metaverse experiences for users.

Creating context for participants

To onboard the workshop participants, many of whom were uninitiated in VR, or the concept of the Metaverse; we designed and built 4 context building VR scenarios. These scenarios let users experience a range of interactions that are likely to be carried out in the Metaverse in 4 primary industries - retail, travel, education and entertainment. In each of the interactions within these scenarios we highlighted the type of data collected to give the participants a swift and deep understanding of the subject matter.

The use of these scenarios allowed for more informed participation in the rest of the workshop, deeper exploration of solutions and better outcomes overall.

Rapidly prototyping with multiple participants

During the workshop the team from Craig Walker designed ways for participants to rapidly prototype their ideas. A mix of paper, pens, perspex, video, photo and participants as actors meant the prototyping was engaging and quick to iterate. Participants designed a number of possible real world UIs and presented these at the end of the workshop in the form of videos, sketches and text.

Iterating on the outcomes

The project team then synthesised the outcomes from the workshop, iterating on them and then developing them into understandable designs. These were transformed into nine animated interaction prototypes. These animated prototypes allowed us to play back the outcomes of their work to the participants and then present these outputs in the final report.