Suggested Speakers
Your very first step into VR might just begin at a table with some paper right in front of you. #rapidprototyping #VR #storytelling
Session Description
Our workshop promotes a hands-on approach to the emerging field of VR journalism. Besides 360 degree video, virtual reality allows you to truly immerse your audience into individual interactive experiences. However, what kind of topics are suited and how do you start thinking, planning and designing an interactive VR journalism experience? Introducing a rapid prototyping approach, we want to scribble, sketch and play around with VR paper prototypes. The concept – broadly used in the context of game design – aims for fast results and iterative development circles. That enables us to come up with first results after a very short amount of time at almost no cost. The goal is for participants to have
(1) learned about and applied user centric design methodology in VR journalism,
(2) enhanced knowledge of the needs and constraints of a VR experience,
(3) hands-on experience in sketching and presenting a VR storyboard.
The outcome will include
(1) Each participant has designed and presented an idea for an interactive VR Journalism product
(2) These prototypes are perfectly suited for further usage and presentation in the newsroom
How does your submission contribute to the diversity of the conference?
VRagments is a Berlin based Virtual Reality (VR) startup focusing on creating journalistic VR projects in collaboration with newsrooms. The company develops interactive VR experiences as well as 360° immersive environments for this exciting young medium. By exploring possibilities and pushing the boundaries of VR, VRagments creates new ways of telling stories that matter. Based on the experiences gathered throughout these projects, VRagments is building a VR tool for journalists that helps them build their own VR stories in an easy and fast way. This tool called Fader received funding from Google's Digital News Initiative in Europe. We believe that with our workshop, we can contribute to the diversity of the conference by (1) offering a new method to the participants (paper sketching) and (2) being able to bring a European perspective to the table.