Transcript of Yvonne Tse's presentation Perfect, OK. I'm Yvonne, and I'm a senior user researcher at Assurity. And earlier this year, we were involved in an experiment with Customs using virtual reality to simulate the user experience within the customs space, specifically at Christchurch airport. So I've been really lucky, because I've been able to see firsthand how virtual reality can actually really change the game when it comes to user experience, without disrupting business as usual and just general operations. So the possibilities of VR and AR for government and private sector as well are actually endless. So our scenario was that, at 4:00 AM, every single morning in Christchurch, at the international airport, they had a bottleneck of tired, frustrated travellers trying to get through customs to their departure gate. And the problem was, well, there's a lot of variables going on. So there were concerns raised by customs officers around the sign content potentially being a problem, around the placement of signs in this specific area. Around the configuration of seating, you can kind of see there's a few seats out there at the front, just there. And also the placement of their kiosks, as well. But they were also really keen to experiment with new technologies, so I took part in a two part project. The first part of it was user research through crowd. And this was to baseline general understanding and the understandability around signage at the airport. So it was a static experiment. We exposed a whole bunch of signs to the Assurity crowd, which is a bunch of remote users. They give us feedback. And that fed into the next part of our project, which was doing user experience using VR. So this was exposing users to different potential airport layouts. So what we did was, we exposed users to three potential layouts with a different combination of signs. It is a prototype environment, so the textures and things like that are very limited. But based on what we found out from our first round of crowd testing, we also experimented with different types of signage as well — digital signage, moving signs. And we asked for feedback throughout that experience. And we set the users up with a scenario that, perhaps they'd be holding a New Zealand passport, or an Australian one. We tried to fit it to whatever that user found themselves in their last international experience. So they might have been travelling with family, as well. And we use the HTC Vibe to do that. So I think this is illustrated with an example. So hopefully this thing just goes. It's a bit wobbly, but — so they would be given a scenario where they'd have a passport of some sort. They'd look around their environment, and constantly we'd be asking them for feedback. What do you think? How does it make you feel? How was the placement of the customs officer make you feel? Where do you think you'd go next? And then, in this case, this scenario, this person has opted to go towards a Smartgate. And then they'd slot the passport into the smartgate. They'd wait their turn. And then they'd wait for the next gate to open. And then they'd finish. So the intention of that was to basically simulate and immerse them into an experience. And so we found that there were quite a lot of factors that could involve a user's experience in the departure zone of the airport. And we found that context really drives their behaviour, so whether they're travelling by themselves, on business, with family, completely changes the way they behave in that environment. Space and time are really important for people to make decisions when they're at that particular point in the airport. Inexperienced travellers, so the participants with English as a second language found the entire thing just really difficult and quite stressful. But people who had a lot of smartgate experience found the whole thing pretty easy. Blocked signs — so we had simulations where we had some passengers stand well in the way of signage, which is actually what happens every morning at 4:00. Really slows down the process and adds to that frustration. You know, why is that person in my way, sort of thing. And need for speed, as well, in that people just really want to get through as fast as possible, and virtual reality was able to simulate that. The customs officer, there was a lot of assumptions made about the role of the customs officer in that space. So when we were in planning meetings, there was a lot of conversation about the customs officers. It's not smartgate if the customs officer needs to be there all the time supervising that experience. But what we found was that the role of the customs officer was actually incredibly important to the entire experience. Some people saw it as almost a policing sort of role, or some people found the customs officer incredibly intimidating. But some people actually saw the customs officer almost like as a guiding person, or even as a landmark — as, oh, I have to go there because I see them. So what we learned, and I'm sure you can read, you can tell by that quote, is that people felt incredibly immersed by the experience. And it really gave, as a user researcher, it gave that extra level of detail. And being able to see people go through that, imagine what it's going to be like, was pretty incredible actually. And the benefits of it, it was incredibly low impact to business as usual. We could just move queues whenever we wanted to. We could change the configurations of the signs. We could change the configurations of the seats. And it was actually incredibly easy to do, and it was really easy to use as well. So most of the participants we had had never had any virtual reality experience, but it was actually pretty easy. So hopefully, it was five minutes that gave you a little bit of insight in how VR could really work for government. Thank you.