Forensic Friends
VR Crime-Scene Game for Middle School Forensics and Biology Education
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Work at MIT Media Lab | 2018 Teammates: Greg Osborne, Stephen White Skills: Game Design, VR Scene Building, VR Prototyping Tools: Unity, VRTK, Rhino
Virtual Crime Scene
Forensic Friends gives students a hands-on experience with forensics without the usual accompanying mess of setting up a crime scene.
Students will collect evidence at the virtual crime scene, analyze it in the lab, and finally fill out the story of what occurred.
Here learning is combined with contextual and creative problem-solving.
Why VR?
Many middle-school teachers have been teaching forensics by creating a fake crime scene in the classroom that the students can explore.
However, this can be limiting in some ways: 1) it requires both time and energy on the part of the teacher to do the set-up,
2) real-world forensic lab analysis might take several days, which can be sped up in a virtual game without sacrificing the important steps
3) the original forensic lab facilities can be expensive…
Learning Goals
We want to familiarize students with the basics of forensic analysis: hair, fingerprint, and blood tests.
Hair: User picks up pieces of hair and transfers them to the microscope.
When positioning them at microscope, a feed pops up with the microscope view, with important hair qualities to look for.
This would help students understand the difference between different person’s hair and learn about what that difference signifies.
Fingerprint: the user picks up slides with fingerprints on them and transfers them to the computer.
The computer takes 20 seconds to analyze the fingerprints and spits out the right answer.
During that period, information pops up to teach key biological features of fingerprints.
Blood: User takes blood sample. After creating a solution, user drops blood in to separate the DNA.
User takes the DNA and drops it in the electrophoresis tray, where the computer analyzes and compares, spitting out the match.
In VR, students could experience lab experimental processes and develop operational skills.
The Story
James is having a housewarming party. He invites his girlfriend (Fatima), his brother (Brad), his best friend (Alan), and his mother who is visiting.
Before the dinner, he leaves a voicemail to his friend [found on phone]. “Hey, I’m sorry but I can’t lend you money right now, I’m having some trouble with Fatima and I probably shouldn’t make financial decisions without asking her. But you should come over for the housewarming dinner, Mom’s in the kitchen right now, cooking her favorite steak [moms evidence all over the kitchen]. It’ll be fun.”
During the course of the dinner, Alan accidentally cuts himself with a steak knife. He’s directed to the bathroom by James to find the first-aid kit. This is when Alan bleeds onto the bathroom floor [his (older) blood is in the bathroom]. Steak knife is kept in the kitchen sink unwashed with his fingerprints and blood on it. Then, dinner wraps up, and everyone leaves.
After everyone left, James realizes that Brad left his hat, and sends him a text inviting him to come pick it up. James shortly receives a call from the private detective he hired to stalk his girlfriend [phone records say call from detective]. Detective confirms that his girlfriend is cheating on him with Brad [hair of both Fatima and Brad on his hat].
James is then infuriated and is pacing with a knife in his bedroom, waiting for Brad. He throws the flowers that Fatima had brought for the housewarming party into the trash [flowers are in the trash]. He also leaves his phone charging in the kitchen [phone left in the kitchen drawer with cord leading to it from outlet].
Brad comes back, and James invites him to his room to pick up his hat.
James then turns on Brad with the knife he had prepared, but Brad catches his hand. There is a struggle, during which Brad (in an act of self defense) stabs James .
During the stabbing, James loosens a button of Brad’s shirt that rolls under the bed [button has fingerprint of Brad & James on it, from the struggle.] [Girlfriends prints are all over the room].
Brad disoriented leaves the knife in the luggage box as he flees, but also forgets his hat in his excitement. [Brad’s hair and Fatima’s hair is on the hat on the bed stand].
Alan comes over to ask for money again.He sees the door is ajar and walks right in, where he looks around briefly for James and finds him dead in his room.
After a period of shock, he realizes the wallet is on the table, and he really, really needs the money. He rifles through the wallet, opening his wound again. [Alan’s fingerprints and also fresh blood are on the wallet], and then proceeds to call 911 to let them know what happened.
Police arrive. You are the forensic specialist.
Now you have to find evidences in the scene, analyze them in the lab which is located at the back of the police car, then piece everything together….
Paper Prototyping
We mapped out the key evidences (F:fingerprints, B:blood, H:hair) in the scene, and used that for initial user testing.
With the paper prototypes, we were able to find out how users responded to the story, whether it is too obvious or too obscure.
My Role
I was responsible for 1) brainstorming on the gameplay, I proposed adding implicit environmental cues to make the game more challenging.
2) asset building, scene construction, game aesthetics. Acer Mixed Reality doesn’t allow much mobility,
hence the whole scene was designed to be condensed in space.
Living Room Design
Kitchen Design
Bedroom Design
Bathroom Design
Lab Design (Placed inside A Police Car)
Design Details
User Test
From our user test, we learned that audio plays a big part, so the next steps will include more intriguing audios.
the overall lighting needs to be a bit brighter to make evidences pop out, or some fluorescent effects could be applied.
Finally we abandoned some of the post-processing effects on the camera to alleviate “jittering” reported by users.
What I learned from the Process
“When you work as a team in VR projects, it’s crucial to adopt an agile approach.
In the beginning, having some token game objects for programmers to code interactions on,
which can be simultaneously enriched by asset creators saves a lot of time.”
Future Work
1. Interaction: add relevant interactions that enhances learning: phone-tracing, lab equipment interactions…
2. Audio: design riveting audio and embed it creatively into the game: different interactions with the assets can trigger different sound effects
3. Data: figure out a way to collect user data inside VR to examine their learning outcome.
4. Collaboration: design ways of collaboration inside and outside VR for students to learn from each other.