V R the Jury

PEOPLE ARE NAIVE REALISTS, they believe what they see accurately represents reality.

That becomes especially problematic in the legal system, where video evidence is becoming increasingly prevalent. Jurors see this evidence and believe that their interpretation of what they see is complete and objective, even when others are clearly interpreting the same information differently. 

Why this matters is that new forms of evidence like Body Camera footage are being presented as the answer or solution to bias. Yet research tells us that such footage, because it only points at the civilian and fails to give us as much visual information about the officer, deflates people’s perception of the culpability of police officers. 

So we wanted to set up this game to see: Can we make people experience the limitations of their perception? Can we facilitate conversations about these disparate perceptions and implications for justice?

We developed:

• A multi-platform “party game” re-creating the eye-witness and jury experience using 3D immersive and 2D video to document a possible crime.
• The in-headset user is immersed in a 3D virtual SCENARIO and tasked with documenting a possible crime using a virtual camera-phone. The virtual camera feed is presented in real time to non-immersed players (1-6) on a shared monitor, who witness ONLY what the in-headset user chooses to document using their virtual camera.
• Non-immersed players then act as jury and make individual verdicts about the case
• They are then prompted to all deliberate together, with the hope that the discussion highlights the disconnect between different their perspectives as well as the different perspective of the eyewitness

VR The Jury Gameplay Scene: