Stephanie Heckman Tests Visual Facilitation in VR

Stephanie Heckman has developed a hand drawn immersive space for collaboration in response to Covid-19.  Stephanie has developed a prototype for generating VR illustrations to support collective working through visual facilitation.

Stephanie is a visual facilitator who had observed the unique set of challenges digital platforms pose to a streamlined communication experience. Stephanie has pioneered immersive technology to explore visual facilitation in response to the risk of missing nonverbal cues and clues, proper eye contact and attuned ‘turn-taking’ in speech, and everything from gesticulation to the tactility of whiteboards, paper, and post it notes that are employed in collective planning. Stephanie used VR drawing apps to create live streams in zoom and developed immersive worlds for visual facilitation. Generating new platforms for collaboration during and beyond the Covid-19 Crisis.

You can find more about Stephanie’s work here:

https://www.stephanieheckman.com/

Adaptive Immersive Content and Software Authoring for Safety-Critical Training

Sentireal have created an Adaptive Immersive Content and Software Authoring for Safety-Critical Training with funding from Future Screens NI.  Sentireal have develop a training domain and subset of training scenarios within social work.   Social work training was chosen as the initial training domain because social workers cannot currently develop their decision-making skills for complex cases involving issues such as dementia, mental health and child protection in a safe, virtual environment. The majority of the 106,000 social workers currently employed in the UK did not have early access to realistic training covering particularly challenging and safety-critical scenarios, often creating hesitancy and stress when such scenarios are encountered in daily practice. Key social work education reviews published in recent years have highlighted digitalization of training information as a key area for development. Sentireal is now utilising the outcomes from this R&D project to feed into a wider Sentireal R&D and product development programme for a new software platform.

For more information:

https://www.sentireal.com/

Future Screens NI Partner Professor Cathy Craig From Incisiv Appointed Enterprise Fellow

Future Screens NI Partner Professor Cathy Craig of INCISIV has been a appointed an Enterprise Fellow within the Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub.  Cathy is using virtual reality to better understand how the brain makes decisions during sport. 

INCISIV have previously received funding via Future Screens NI Open Call and have just been awarded a Future Screens NI Pre-Commercialisation Award to take their tech to the global market.

Future Screens NI Present the Library Club

Margaret McGoldrick is a Northern Irish producer/writer-director and recently was accepted to the Women in Films UK’s Mentorship Scheme sponsored by Netflix.  In response to the Covid-19 pandemic Margaret has proposed  “The Library Club” which is a fictional TV series which merges entertainment and education to support home learning.

Future Screens NI Invest £115,000 to Shape the Future in a Post-Covid World

Future Screens NI have awarded 13 companies a financial package of £5,000 with an accompanying academic support package of £10,000 to advance the future in a Post-Covid World.  Selected projects are operating at the intersection of health, community, education and new emerging technologies. 

Projects include amongst others:

The Bus Stop by Big Telly which will develop a future proofed prototype to promote human interaction

Story Moments by Corrina Askin which will develop emotionally responsive story moments which will provide emotional support when required

Flying by Gwen Stevenson which is a one woman immersive theatre show

Cloaked by Joe McStravick an immersive film capturing the experience of an autistic child during and in the aftermath of Covid-19.