Using Virtual Reality for Knowledge Transfer and Teaching Empathetic Design

At Shepley Bulfinch, we decided to push virtual reality (VR) into a different aspect of our practice and experiment with it as a tool to teach ADA codes. We’ll share the story of how we discovered the benefits of VR as an empathetic experience for further cementing code knowledge and ensuring equity in our designs. Using Revit software, 3ds Max software, Unreal Engine, and the physics-defying nature of the digital world, we created a first-person experience that helped our designers truly feel what it was like to use a wheelchair or be a child in an adult’s world. Codes are designed to tell you what to do, but codes in VR can help you experience why they are so important from a first-person experiential point of view.