Oculus Launch Pad: First Blog
First, I want to deeply thank Ebony Peony for creating this opportunity!! The investment and value that has been given to me will not go wasted. Itâs my personal mission to make sure that the ROI (regardless if my app gets selected) will be positively felt, tenfold!
Fun background story on how IÂ discovered VR
So my life has been weird the last few years. In 2012, I left my hometown of San Jose and my budding career in the public sector and began a life of nomadic traveling around Europe, North Africa, Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Amidst these travels in 2014, I discovered I had a knack for coding and started career transitioning as a freelance web developer. I decided I would provide paying services from clients (including Issa Rae!) and use those funds to fund my volunteering at NGOâs overseas.Â
While undertaking my Masterâs in Interaction Design at the University of the Arts London, I had fell in love with VR development and experiences. My course had a makeshift Makerâs Lab/Studio with an unused Oculus DK2 and with some googling on how to operate it, my life had changed. I worked day and night for four months straight learning Unity 3D and configuring/troubleshooting it to work on a Mac OS X with the last runtime version/plug-in developed for it.Â
(Mitigating Unconscious Bias with Virtual Reality from Clorama on Vimeo.)
Not knowing the industry around VR, I started working in London as a UXâer for a small startup tech consultancy that also had an Oculus DK2 setup which I thought was fate. I tried to start a VR community within the office and held a few brown bag lunch training sessions on Unity 3D to see if I could get passionate friends with me on this but failed.Â
In the summer of 2016, the company went out of business and I was the first to let go. I moved to France--to a medieval âwine countryâ town called âSancerreâ at the top of a mountain, two hours south of France. I spent 3 months in solitude trying to figure out what my next steps in life would be. At this point, social media became my source to keep my eyes on the new VR community happening in Silicon Valley. I started to feel MAJOR fomo and decided that this, plus Brexit happening, was a sign that it was time to come back home.Â
Learning about Launch Pad
I came back Sept 8th to San Jose, and started my first week at Silicon Valley AR/VR Academy hosted at Cisco for 6 weeks. Four weeks in, I started my first shift as a Brand Ambassador on the Oculus Team (via a staffing agency). It was my first time at Facebook HQ having been away from the Bay Area/USA for a few years, and I was so embarrassingly star struck and couldnât contain my emotion walking into Building 18 offices. At this point, Oculus was a dream company and I was fortunate enough to get meet Ebony on day 1!
Selfie at Oculus Connect 3!
I remember asking her a whole bunch of questions about the company and telling her about my passions to work in this field now that I had relocated back to my hometown in Silicon Valley. She told me that I should look into this Launch Pad for 2017 and after doing some research online, I read through a few of the blogs by the first cohort participants and knew this program was for me!
My VR rap sheet since coming back to Silicon Valley
During this time, Iâve been balancing freelance work as a VR developer for the London Neuropsychology Clinic and University College London. In December, I had gotten a promotion to Demo Specialist for a staffing agency on the Oculus Team which was super exciting. From November to February, I was assigned to the UX Research team to conduct user testing under the Head Researcher, Richard Yao.Â
Demo video of my first contracted google cardboard app for the London Neuropsychology Clinic exploring âembodimentâ methods for healthcare practitioners at the Unconscious Bias Conference held in November 2016.Â
I also participated in the Silicon Valley AR/VR Academy for a 6 week VR learning program. And then got an opportunity to work as a Lead UX Researcher at Code for America, where theyâve indulged my vr obsession in the office and have allowed me to work on side initiatives of 360 filming nonprofit stakeholders that we are partnering with
My Aspirations for 2017 Launchpad
Itâs been a whirlwind this month of June between the excitement and anxiousness of getting accepted into Oculus Launch Pad.
I was traveling for work to Alaska and made sure to come back for this weekend...between cancelled flights, delays and figuring out Caltrain/Lyft to make the commute from SF to Menlo Park, the experience was unforgettable meeting all the other Launch Pad participants and the amazing sense of immediate community that I arrived to--united by a passion for VR, regardless if we were strangers.
Arriving at Facebook HQ on June 10th and meeting all the different people doing âthe lordâs workâ (aka helping shape and contribute to the growth of VR) :â). Â Learning the different ideas that people are working on has been extremely motivating for me to continue on my path to creating VR experiences.
Now more than ever am I committed to continue pushing myself as a creator, researcher, and developer to take this challenge of making an idea come to life by the end of these 13 weeks.
Rough sketch in Tiltbrush for what the starting home environment would be for my game âReincarnationâ. You pick a life mission and the player is assigned a body, cultural society to inhabit, and will have to work through branch narratives reach objective (aka meet life goal).
I was struggling between the ideas of creating games, training videos (building on my MA research thesis), or exploring something new all together --taking advantage of my fellowship with Code for America in Civic Tech and exploring ways to bridge the empathy gap between stakeholders in VR.
Given the short amount of weeks and some feedback from peers, I think I will continue the gaming route, to create a concept prototype that can be used to be a starting point for a VR product that can also have a social impact (unconsciously ;))
Iâm excited to build a network of peers and friends who are just as passionate and skilled at VR as I am. This alone gives me the home Iâve been looking for as a women of color, struggling to find her âpeopleâ in the space of VR. The people and the energy I feel from this group alone is almost overwhelmingly beautiful to me and Iâm still trying to get over the shock that this is actually all real. Please bear with me, people. But rest assured, Iâm joining this party in the weeks to come. :)
My portfolio website: www.creativeclo.com/loves/VR.html