Industrial Design Students Still in COVID Quarantine Learn How to Prototype Real Chairs in a Virtual World

Gargoyle presents his chair design to students and instructors

Industrial designer Robb Godshaw was recently set to co-teach a class in rapid prototyping at San Francisco State University, when a somewhat inconvenient global pandemic broke out.

As originally planned, students would first learn how to use CAD software, and then learn how to use to computer-aided manufacturing software to actually create a full-size wooden chair via 3D printing and CNC machining. So at the end, each student would literally get to leave class with the chair they’d created from start to finish.  

That was supposed to be the “satisfying and empowering” portion of the semester, as Godshaw puts it to me, but the problem was, the university was (back last May) still in lockdown. “This made COVID especially frustrating,” he goes on. “I thought hard of what lessons students had learned in the previous semesters, and tried to find a way that some of those lessons could be learned virtually.” 

But where Zoom or another online video conferencing platform might work for most other subjects, his class needed some level of in-person teaching:

“There are students whose chairs suffered from serious structural issues, craft issues, aesthetic issues, ergonomic issues, and simple scale issues, as it is very difficult to know how large the chair you are designing on a computer screen is.”

That meant “finding a tool that would allow people to move in real space with human sized avatars that would allow for sitting and chatting”, but also didn’t necessarily require a new gaming PC or a VR headset. 

The online learning alternative he ultimately landed on, as you can see below, just turned 17 years old:

“I was pretty surprised that it was Second Life, which I had received as being long shuttered,” he tells me. “The platform allowed us to reveal that some chairs were too large, some chairs were too small, and several chairs were very difficult to sit in, even virtually.”

More than that, he observes, “[What] Second Life provided was an escape valve for the frustration of our students with serious and justified Zoom fatigue and an entire community decimated by the campus closure… Something weird and social to break the tedium of online learning.”

Weird being key. Gargoyles and other odd creatures presented their designs, or joined in the classroom conversation. During the presentation, Robb returned from a bathroom break only to discover that several students had nudged his avatar into a field of flowers.

“[T]hey giggled and scattered in prankish delight and it was very reminiscent of actual classroom antics, and exactly the sort of social interaction that Zoom prevents. People found space for self-expression, some putting several hours into the customization of their avatar.”

After the review session, the instructors gave a shout-out to longtime virtual world educator John "Pathfinder" Linden, who lent the class his virtual land for the presentation. The remaining students zipped around in hoverboards, then strapped their gallery virtual chairs to virtual explosives, and in an act of quarantine catharsis, blew it all to hell. 

“There is a joylessness in Zoom instruction that is very exhausting for students and teachers alike,” Godshaw tells me, reflecting on the virtual world teaching experience. “I feel like SL, despite it being an ancient and jittery platform, allows for joy above all else. In terms of the actual [industrial design] critique, I did find it easier to address shortcomings of the designs in a context with human sized avatars and sitting mechanics.” 

Steven Thompson, who taught a separate section of the class that met in SL for the presentation, concurs: 

“I was skeptical at first but once we were actually doing the chair crit, it felt like the most normal our class had been since we were in person, even though there were fantastical creatures flying around.  I think part of teaching is instruction but I really believe only a small amount of learning happens through listening. There was this sense that, in SL, students were having their own experience, in that they were seeing similar things but from their own perspective.” 

This in contrast to teaching via online video, Thompson goes on, which is “basically the same experience for every student in that they are all seeing and hearing the same things, looking at the same things at the same time.  One of the most important parts of learning in a group of peers is the kinds of explorations that can happen together.  The community aspect is something that is very hard to quantify but essential in the trajectory of instruction that happens on the short and long time scales.  

“Though it is no replacement for in-person instruction, SL seemed to give back a bit of that community and a degree of the autonomy that each student has in terms of how they experience their education, how they choose to learn and small or large adjustments they constantly make based on how their brain might be wired to learn.”

When (or is it if?) the pandemic ends, their students will finally be able to return to campus in San Francisco, and finally use the university’s equipment to finally print up their chairs in the real world. Until then, Godshaw’s key advice for other educators thinking of using virtual worlds in their own classes: 

“I would say that the most important thing to consider is the emotional experience of community, and that any attempt at meaningful pedagogy during a crisis of this magnitude must keep that in mind as the primary goal.”  

Thanks to Diana Brazzell of Footnote for the tip!

Comments

[Pathfinder]

Good times. <3

[Fionalein]

Real chairs? Where are those supposed to go to? Abu-Ghuraib? Sorry, but those prototype pictures look uncomfortable for me never to investigate what other ideas they might have come up with...