VR-publication

A common issue throughout history is the misunderstanding between groups of people, and an issue that is still present today.

History class seems like an unmissable part of the school system. When taking the following reasoning, it seems obvious why: Studying history helps us understand and grapple with complex questions and dilemmas by examining how the past has shaped (and continues to shape) global, national, and local relationships between societies and people. [1]

Although the above seems like a great asset to anyone in our current day society, history's shortcomings present themselves in the way its taught and the mediums present for that. In the Dutch curriculum, history seems factual based; which is good, as we need the real truth. However, relationships between people require a certain understanding of emotions and critical thinking skills that can be lost in this factual based learning.

To aid the understanding of the emotional depth of certain situations, I want to introduce the following medium to the curriculum: first person based learning in the form of virtual reality based story telling. In this project, the story of Jeanne d'Arc will be used.

[1] https://history.wisc.edu/undergraduate-program/history-careers/why-history/

[2] https://www.quora.com/How-is-history-taught-in-high-schools-in-the-Netherlands

[3] https://www.canonvannederland.nl/nl/primair-onderwijs/didactisch-concept/leerplan-slo/geschiedenis

[4] https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=personality_lab , p4

[5] https://twitter.com/binnahar85/status/1594764842220617728

The purpose of the problem analysis is to justify the project's existence.

Considering the History Curriculum's Shortcomings

When we take a look at how history is taught in the Dutch curriculum, it does not seem to tackle the purpose of history class given in the intro at all. My personal experience actually contradicts this statement, which is perhaps the reason for coming up with the project. As a relatively young individual who was taught through the standard curriculum in the Netherlands, I can attest that my teacher's tried to teach me through the aforementioned reasoning. A great memory is my teacher giving us an assignment to write a diary from the perspective of a commoner in the renaissance, with specific character descriptions for all of us.

However, it seems this was not the golden standard. My peers who had lessons from the other teachers often complained about why we were even learning about history to begin with, and even peers that were taught by the same teachers. My peers from others school could not seem to care one bit for history class, and their experience seems much worse. Both from the friends I have spoken about this and the experiences I read about online. [2]

A personal grip of mine with not just history class but school in general is its adversity to accommodating to neuro-atypical students. As someone with recently diagnosed ADHD, it seems like no wonder that I never managed to 'just read my books and learn the years'. If I had a bad day at school, or if my teacher was absent, well that was that for me. I simply could not bring myself to read the damn book. Luckily I had amazing teachers throughout my school career, and I always loved learning in the classroom. But the lack of other mediums to learn from is glaring, and I cannot imagine how I would have ended had I not had such nice experiences with my teachers. For this reason, I want to introduce a different medium that stimulates the brain in different ways.

Dynamic VR usage

It is important to have actual usage for virtual reality, a 360 degree experience. The scenes chosen were thought and will be made of with this in mind, creating an immersive experience.

Unity

The chosen program to make this with is Unity. The choice was Unity or Unreal Engine, and as my laptop does not run the latest version of UE, the choice was quite clear. An added bonus is that Unity is the industry standard for gaming.

When considering what seems feasible for the given timespan and direction, requirements will be made. The requirements will be divided in two categories: Functional and Non-Functional. The difference between the two is that Functional Requirements define active features and constraints for the program, while Non-Functional requirements define the structure for the program to use and other passive features, such as program options or developmental processes, for the project to follow.

The Functional requirements will be categorized into 4 different groups according to the MoSCoW method: Must have, Should Have, Could Have and Won’t Have.

The Must Have requirements are the minimum features needed for the project to reach its basic functionality.
The Should Have requirements are needed for the program to be considered finished.
The Could Have requirements represent the features that would enhanced the user experience, but are not something that seem needed.
Finally, the Won’t Have requirements define
the features that I would not implement, and act as a written reminder for
me to not implement them.

Must Have
1. The project must be based on the story of Jeanne d'Arc and in her perspective.

2. The project must have a scene to portray Jeanne joining the army.

3. The project must have a scene to portray Jeanne being crucified.

4. The project must include a mention of the relevant years to fulfill the curriculum's needs.

Should Have
1. The project should have voice acting.

2. The scenes should be fully dynamic and give merit to the usage of VR.

Could Have
1. The project could include a scene of Jeanne in prison.

Won't Have
1. The project won't include gamified elements, meaning there won't be a way to 'win'.

2. The project won't include actual combat in-case Jeanne gets portrayed to be fighting.

The following requirements serve as an example of what to expect when talking about requirements. A full list will be made by the end of week 3.

Functional Requirements:

Non-Functional requirements:

1. The project will be made entirely in Unity v2021.3.14f1

Intercross between Arts & Sciences

I wanted to have a small section where I note how I personally incorporate arts and sciences into this project.

For arts, I feel like a huge portion of the inspiration behind this project is emotional intelligence. This is entirely based on my interactions with the world and the things I have been taught by the people I look up to for their intelligence, and from the things I have noticed myself. This is not something I can verify scientifically, in fact while researching for this topic I found little to nothing about the scientific relation between emotional intelligence and historical events. While me making a publication on hotglue might seem like arts to me or others, it is something I learned this in an academic setting and would therefore categorize as somewhat scientific, though I consider it outside of my usual workspace.

For science, the way I tackled the creation of the project is entirely based on my learnings from TU Delft. The tutorials are based on what kind of tutorials worked for me during my studies. Sprints, MoSCoW, my way of writing are all either directly from my learnings at the university or inspiired by my learnings at the university.

I don't think a purely scientific approach would have allowed me to find societal relevance for this project, and had I let go my scientific approach I don't think I would have a project right now or by the end of the quarter.

My project allows me to collaborate with others in regards to many parts of my project: its story, its ideology and modeling assets are only some example of things about this project that require knowledge from different fields.

An overview of the creative process.

Sprints will be used for weekly planning and goal meeting. Sprints are a way to assign tasks that seem feasible, and allow yourself to keep track of what was done and what needs to be done. This will be done in a combination of Trello and Word. The sprints will be 5 days long, allowing for time off in the weekend.

On Friday, sprint retrospectives will be held, to look back on what was accomplished, and what unfinished tasks will be pushed to the next week.

With this methodology, I have noticed that noticing what you are stuck on becomes quite easy and allows for proper planning and a greater sense of self-awareness in skills, making it easier to notice when you need to find external sources for help.

Intercross between Arts & Sciences

Considering the World's Adversity to Emotional Intelligence

When thinking back on the large rights movements of the past century in the west, the civil rights movement, women's rights movement and queer rights movement all pop up. Their connection seems obvious; it is all about human rights after all. Although there are enough to similarities to connect them, there is one important one that does not seems stressed often in these exact words: the self-righteous suppressors showcased an incredibly low emotional intelligence in all of these scenarios. It is important to recognize this, as it is an indication of what causes modern day misunderstandings. Emphasizing the self-righteous part, it is key to understand that there were people that truly believed they were doing the right thing. As it is easy to dismiss this entire issue as an act of malice, this nuance needs to be stressed. Proving these self-righteous suppressors had low emotional intelligence is not something feasible; not only because this should have been done in the moment but also because emotional intelligence and the way it is measured is not properly recognized as it currently stands.

As the validity and even existence of emotional intelligence is often pulled into question, a definition will now follow and is the one that will be considered any time emotional intelligence is mentioned through this publication: emotional intelligence refers to an ability to recognize the meanings of emotion and their relationships, and to reason and problem-solve on the basis of them. Emotional intelligence is involved in the capacity to perceive emotions, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand the information of those emotions, and manage them. [4]

It is with this reasoning, that when looking at the cause for the suppression that caused the above mentioned movements, obvious inability to understand emotions and properly access them appears. Men did not understand how women could think they wanted to go to university. Society could not fathom why two people of the same gender would want to be together. Factory owners saw their workers as inferior, by reasons entirely out of their reach. I do not have a source for these types of reasonings from back then, and will go as far as saying that I do not need them, as the world still faces these same issues. I can open something as accessible as Twitter and find enough tweets confirming these thoughts. [5]

The choice of Jeanne d'Arc

From the get go, I knew I wanted to use a female POV. Being a guy who grew up with his sister and mother, having seen guys around me misunderstand women has always peeved me in a way.

The choice of Jeanne d'Arc comes down to me liking her and her being a vocal point of the 100 year war, making her a part of the curriculum. Her choice is catered towards my target audience, as I know it is part of the target audience, namely the Dutch's secondary education's mandatory history curriculum.

The project aims to aid the Dutch curriculum in fulfilling history's teachings better, in particular the mandatory curriculum. Note that I did consider the means and accessibility of the people that might need this. My immediate solution to that would be to make the project a mobile experience, but for this project i will be focusing on a particular set of VR glasses instead, making it a little far into future before something like this could be part of the curriculum and I recognize that. However, the concept itself is not exclusive to the VR glasses, and thus I think still has current day merit.