Jumping from 4cm high in Virtual Reality or the day a fearless man couldn't make an extra step forward ...

Beyond gaming and e-learning, a whole range of capabilities is promised to Virtual Reality (VR). But we are somehow missing real-life examples where VR has been used efficiently to improve the daily life of users.

As described in my previous article, I took the opportunity to be in a "safe" environment to run a few experiments.

The Plank Experience

This experience is about walking on a real physical plank, while wearing a virtual reality headset simulating the very same plank 60 floor high from the ground ... and eventually taking a leap. (More details on the official page : https://toast.gg/)

The making-of

To make the experience more interesting - and more realistic, I leveraged my crafting "skills", in order to build a real-life plank with an offset of 4cm , that will facilitate with the experience protocol (described in the next section).

The protocol

1) The experimentee first walks across the plank WITHOUT WEARING THE HEADSET, at a reasonable pace, and after reaching the end, make a small jump to be back on the ground.

2) The experimentee then put the headset on and is (virtually) transported to the ground floor of a building. From there he/she enters an elevator and click on a button to reach the 60th floor.

3) After the doors open, he/she is facing a virtual plank and some void, and the challenge is

A) To set both feet on the plank (the real one, which is synchronized with the virtual one),

B) To walk along the walk, as far as possible,

C) To jump (and crash on the floor, 60 floors below)

The Hypothesis

Even if the experimentee is conscious of being in the VR, the brain is cheated and thus completing the task is now perceived as completely different.

The Expectation

Asking the experimentee how does he/she feels about this experience, would let experimentee verify (or not) the following principle: the brain can't realize the difference between reality and imagination - in the present case virtual reality.

The Results

NB: the experience ran only on 8 people so the sample is no statistically significant

All experimentees successfully walked across the plank and jumped while not wearing the headset.

All experimentees managed to wear the headset, press the lift button and reach the 60th floor.

All of them were "wahooed" by the scene when the elevator doors opens to the void.

One experimentee then complained that the plank was far thinner than the real one (which - as we verified later - was just a perception).

Two experimentees took about 30 seconds to just lay their first foot on the plank.

Two experimentees gave up in the first 30 cm.

Three experimentees reached the end of the plank.

Only 2 of the 8 testers jumped.

One screamed to death ... but jumped in the end :)

What we observed

We have seen various reactions across the experimentees, including body language of self-confidence starting to melt away, skin tone turning red, breath accelerating, legs shaking...

The goal of the experience was not to see them jumping, being shocked, nor failing to walk on the plank.

There is no such thing as failure anyway, as Nelson Mandela used to say "I never lose, I either win or learn."

The climax of this experience always comes when experimentees, taking off the headset, eyes full of emotions, are talking about their impressions and feelings:

" I know it is not real, it is just an image but it felt so real that ... "

Verbalizing how they felt tricked by the experience. How their own brain had been cheated.

I make a link between this experience and all the limitations we put ourselves in. Like the mental models limiting us (point raised also by Beatrice Rousset), and would like to deepen this experience as follow.

How to bring it further

We had a time constraint, but it would have been great to put our skills (as coach/manager /presales/facilitator... ) to a test and try to see how we could have brought everyone to go through this experience until the end -and the jump.

The 4 axes I see worth digging would be:

A) By leveraging the knowledge we had of each individuals and their personal drivers, activate their strength to overcome their fear, through questioning their perception of the reality ( which in fact was a virtual reality mixed with a real plank in real reality - read more about mixing virtual, real and inception )

B) Create variants of the experience to see what factors can make it easier / faster to take the leap. On that note, the variations described on Stanley Milgram's experience are really interesting to measure various ways of influencing results (Does gender comes into play ? What happens if we have several experimentees going through it at the same time ? ...)

C) In the end, does it affect the behavior in the real world ? For example if I picked a navy seal as experimentee, would he have taken the leap more easily ? Or would it have been tougher for him provided the unusual conditions - he/she would never jump without a parachute ?

D) Is this experience harmless ? As the experimentee might behave in a very different way than he/she think he/she would, we know it only when we experience it. It raises the point of the responsibility of the experimenter, as to explain the experience, guide the experimentee in and help him/her out of this experience.

On this last point, when the experience was first conducted, the environment allowed for a very detailed debrief where we ensured that these effects were only short-term and the stress levels decreased once it was finished.

In fact, the absolute majority of the participants (100%) said that they were pleased that they had participated and some even asked for the link to get one headset (if someone at Facebook reads this, it lead to the sale of 3 Oculus Quest )

Conclusion

All of us (experimenter, experimentees as well as observers) had a lot of fun, and hopefully - as said in the disclaimer - no one was hurt nor traumatised by this experience. Surely all of us learned that a virtual situation can stuck a fearless man in front of a 4cm plank.

I really want to add a Special Thanks to all the coaches (Alain R., Stephane P. and Emmanuelle), coach trainers (Gerard, Valérie, Jean and Marie), fellow trainnes and futures coaches who went through the experiment and/or provided guidance and advice about the experience and the article.

Side Note : Since the first draft of this article in december, I ran the experience again with similar results. If you are around Paris-France and willing to try it, send me direct message !

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If you read me so far, Thank you. You might agree with what I wrote (or not). Let me know what you think in the comments ! Also follow me for the next article about VR and Team Collaboration : The Bomb Defusing Experience (coming soon)