Visualizing playfulness through XR Campus 2.0 | Fostering new campus interactions

Loftwork Taiwan and National Cheng Kung University jointly developed the Future Dynamic Program (FDP), an innovative Project-based learning program. Focused on developing problem-solving skills, students are challenged to discard preconceptions and confront real-world issues by using innovative thinking.

Expanding upon last year’s program, this year’s FDP covers three semesters and includes three distinct programs: the Creative Leadership Development Program, Extended Reality (XR) Campus, and Practical Sustainability Proposals. The program provides students with resources from Taiwan, Japan, and Southeast Asia to offer a more diverse perspective.

The need to further develop communication and collaboration skills is heavily emphasized in the program, as students born in the digital age find it increasingly challenging to practice these skills. Traditional communication has evolved from just words to including images and videos, and the future evolution of communication is even more unpredictable. In XR Campus 2.0, instructors guided students to observe how people interact in public spaces on campus and encouraged them to become agents of change in the spatial relationships on campus. As the name suggests, Extended Reality (XR) provides students with tools to create XR environments. Students are empowered to imagine the “invisible” negative spaces on campus, allowing them to design their own on-campus experiences.

When exactly did we become adults and stop seeing our surrounding world as a playground? The term XR refers to the collective technology that enhances realism and immersion by adding digital or physical elements to an environment. Projecting virtual content onto negative spaces around campus becomes possible through spatial scanning, which in turn allows for interesting interactions and the opportunity to interact with fellow students.

Given enough development time, such virtual experiences can undergo a transformation, evolving beyond being just a form of entertainment into various interactive ways that can contribute to the quality of people’s lives by connecting to public data APIs.

Based on this, instructors divided this year’s nine-week XR Campus 2.0 program into two phases. The first five weeks emphasized technical learning, including principle analysis, on-site projection technology, and the construction of alternative XR controllers. The following four weeks focused on experimentation, troubleshooting, and continuous testing.

Instructors like Kyle Li (Parsons School of Design), Professor Shigeru Kobayashi (IAMAS), Paul Yeh (Loftwork, Creative Technologist), and Jom Jetsada Wongwanjaroen (Visiting Specialist) invited students to step into the world between public and virtual spaces, encouraging them to discover interesting things.

Although the nine-week program was brief, students diligently learned about public interaction, observed public spaces, and used APIs to create experiences where multiple people could interact in virtual spaces, exploring the possibilities in interaction between reality and the virtual world.

While observing life on campus, one student, Dylan, observed that many types of litter often filled the baskets of shared bicycles. This realization acted as a trigger, introducing the “broken windows theory”, where the presence of litter attracts more litter, leading to a continuous accumulation of garbage.

In response to this, Dylan humorously characterized this vicious cycle at the university as “Love Passing,” attempting to transform unnecessary actions between individuals into a cycle of goodwill. Using AR technology, Dylan placed virtual litter in the baskets of bicycles, encouraging strangers to leave funny emoji messages. Additionally, with TCXR —experimental technology for XR collaboration— all users could see the messages left by others, fostering psychological interaction across the large campus.

Another idea was the 10min (10 minute) pass time, proposed by another student, Vincent. According to studies, more than 80% of students spend time on their smartphones during breaks in between classes. The NCKU student Vincent kicked off the presentation by simply asking, “What do you do during break time?”

Vincent created a game using AR to draw participation by using interesting but divisive surveys that would encourage interaction, such as asking students how they eat curry rice or whether they are a cat or a dog person. This way, everyone can compete for territory in the virtual space, making a kind of intriguing social experiment at the same time.