This hand-tracked headset VR narrative experience was my final student project, created for the Virtual and Extended Realities MA at UWE, Bristol. I largely worked solo, focusing on design, interaction, and Unity development. I received assistance from Rebecca Evans (dramaturgy/storytelling, scriptwriting, critical feedback), Ciara Everard (research author providing sports psychology feedback), and feedback from course tutors Duncan Speakman and Naomi Smyth.

Immerse yourself in the frustrating and exhausting world of the injured athlete in this virtual reality experience, while understanding the sports psychology that underpins their experience. Based on one of the six narratives outlined in the research paper “Storying Sports Injury Experiences of Elite Track Athletes: A Narrative Analysis” (Everard, Wadey, and Howells, 2021).

As a runner who has suffered from injuries, I was drawn to the sports psychology research “Storying Sports Injury Experiences of Elite Track Athletes: A Narrative Analysis” (Everard, Wadey, and Howells, 2021), and found the injury narratives in the follow-up paper “Construction and Communication of Evidence-Based Video Narratives in Elite Sport: Knowledge Translation of Sports Injury Experiences” (Everard, Wadey, Howells, and Day, 2022) particularly compelling. The second paper involved creating YouTube videos explaining the narratives (not currently available), which inspired my project as I found the verbatim stories of injured athletes relatable and powerful. These stories and the surrounding sports psychology concepts provided a rich canvas for creatively expressing them in VR.

Read more about the project:

• Design and planning docs on Coda.
• Unity project on GitHub