In the latter half of 2019, I completed a nearly 10-year journey and graduated with a Ph.D. in research psychology. Ever since I was in undergrad, I always aimed to take on some role in academia, preferably a teaching and research position — one that mirrored the professors that had inspired me. Unfortunately, once I got to a point where I’d have the credentials to start that career, I felt burnt out.
Upon finishing my Ph.D., I had initially thought about taking a year off to teach English in Japan. It would’ve marked the first time I wouldn’t be doing anything related to psychology since I started on this path in 2010, although I also meant for it to be a way to gain more teaching experience and familiarity with Japanese language and culture as I wanted to expand my research approaches beyond Western customs. With that in mind, I registered for a 3-month course to get my Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) certificate, but after nearing the end of my practicum… COVID-19 started to take the world by storm.
Sometimes things just weren’t meant to be, and the ongoing pandemic gave me a chance to consider what my next steps would be. While I had applied for some academic and research jobs across the US, my particular area of expertise, virtual reality (VR), was a relatively novel field that the majority of universities and research institutions weren’t actively recruiting for. After sending a few dozen job applications, I eventually just stopped submitting altogether. While I gradually came to terms with what I wanted to do, I had to accept that academia wasn’t a place where I could realize it completely.
During my time using VR for my Ph.D. research, I felt that the experiences for the platform was largely generic and lacking in any innovation that could take full advantage of the unique capabilities that VR provides. This isn’t a new problem with VR though, as similar issues could be seen with developers for Nintendo consoles starting from the Wii era (more on this in another article). The VR industry needs a framework for how to build good VR experiences, and while Nintendo was able to demonstrate how their hardware could be used to create innovative game experiences for their consoles, VR currently doesn’t have that — everyone still appears to be trying to test out new ideas while still maintaining traditional gaming standards.
With these considerations in mind, I eventually came across a field that could not only help me to work towards creating better VR experiences, but also where my background in research psychology would be an advantage: User Experience (UX) Design. Looking back at my research portfolio, which ranged from examining whether VR games could be appropriated for self-help therapy to using asymmetrical games as a catalyst for an ethical betrayal manipulation, I’ve been gradually working towards innovating on existing platforms to better understand individual needs and perception. While my research has led to some interesting findings, they fell short of being practical for the average person due to factors like insufficient retesting and a lack of collaborations between academia and commercial organizations.
UX Design is, in a sense, the next logical step that I needed to take to fulfill what I wanted to achieve with my research. As I’ve committed to teaching myself the fundamentals of the field while building up a portfolio that showcases my abilities and design decisions over the past 6 months, I’ve been able to better understand how to empathize with a person’s needs and perceptions in a way that I couldn’t within a sterilized academic environment. Leveraging my experiences within various cultures and fields, it is my hope that I can understand and connect people to one another, now more than ever.
