The Empathy Engine: How Virtual Reality Simulations Cultivate Inclusive Mindsets
📑 Chapters
00:00 - Introduction & Evan’s introduction of himself
01:43 - Story & motivations behind XpertVR
04:35 - Interesting stories from Evan’s career
09:35 - Why connect with VR training
12:00 - Pros and cons of the VR world
13:25 - Right balance between VR & actual reality
16:20 - Using VR skill development
20:00 - VR training is not to replace real-life training
21:35 - The future of VR
28:40 - Potential challenges and risks
32:38 - Jiani’s recap of the episode
34:15 - Evan in his childhood
37:08 - The role of childlike wonder in Evan’s past
39:56 - Challenges in Evan’s life
41:55 - Evan’s magic
Watch the full episode here.
💕 Story Overview
Welcome to a new episode of the @MAGICademy Podcast! In S5E2 we are joined by Evan Sitler-Bates who drops by to have a great conversation about VR. Evan is the CEO and co-founder of XpertVR, a consulting firm that specializes in e-learning and virtual reality solutions, providing companies and skill development initiatives with new ways to deliver their content innovatively and interestingly.
In this episode, we go through the founding and establishment of XpertVR from a passion project to a viable business; what motivates people to learn through VR and the advances in the industry; some pros, cons, and room for improvement in VR-aided skill development techniques; and much more.
🌼 Magical Insights
The DICE Framework to Develop VR Learning: We can guide ourselves with this framework to know in which areas we could use VR in learning: D is for “dangerous”, and we can use VR to train areas which would represent a real-life threat. I is for “impossible”, as we can use it to explore concepts we cannot replicate in real life. C is for “counterproductive”, for scenarios that would be impractical or harmful, and E is for “expensive”, to save the company in traveling, several instructors for a single subject, etc.
Boosting Empathy Through VR: Since VR is a fully immersive experience, it provides an environment that allows users to step into the shoes of others, a concept often referred to as "embodiment" or the "body ownership illusion." This immersive experience can significantly enhance empathy by making the user feel as if they are directly experiencing the life and challenges of another person.
Finding the Balance Between VR Training and Real-Life Training: VR training will never be able to fully erase real-life training since both present unique benefits and challenges. The key is to find the right balance: when figuring out what skills need to be acquired, VR training will be more helpful for learning technical and emotional skills, and real-life training will be better for skills that require physical interaction. Or a structure where VR is used for initial skill acquisition and familiarization, followed by real-life practice to reinforce those skills. Bridging the gap between the two is key for a more complete and thorough training.
The Future of VR: For VR training, the future looks bright as technological advances will only allow us to implement new features and updates to our training methods: advanced simulations with haptic feedback and more real-life sensations, a deeper incorporation of AI to adapt content in real-time based on user performance, and could even play a crucial role in facilitating collaborative projects and team-building exercises in remote-work companies.
⭐ What’s Evan’s Magic?
His creativity and passion for VR and life in general. He has always been passionate about VR ever since he had his first experience with it and doesn’t get tired of finding new ways to harness this technology.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we explored the ways VR can enhance learning experiences, making them more engaging and effective. Through case studies and real-world applications, we learned how immersive simulations can not only potentially improve retention rates but also provide safe environments for learners to practice new skills without the risks associated with traditional methods.
It's clear that the future of learning is not just about content delivery but about creating experiences that captivate and inspire. By integrating VR into different training initiatives or skill development programs we can guarantee a higher retention rate and better-prepared talents.
If you would like to stay tuned with our future guests and their magical stories. Welcome to join us.
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Chatain, J., Kapur, M., & Sumner, R.W. (2023). Three Perspectives on Embodied Learning in Virtual Reality: Opportunities for Interaction Design. Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems;
D., PD, H., & Slater, M. (2016). Virtual Embodiment of White People in a Black Virtual Body Leads to a Sustained Reduction in their Implicit Racial Bias. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10:601. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00601
Gall, D., Roth, D., Stauffert, J., Zarges, J., & Latoschik, M.E. (2021). Embodiment in Virtual Reality Intensifies Emotional Responses to Virtual Stimuli. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.
Muraki, E.J., Speed, L.J., & Pexman, P.M. (2023). Insights into embodied cognition and mental imagery from aphantasia. Nature Reviews Psychology, 2, 591 - 605.
Slater, M. (2017). Implicit Learning Through Embodiment in Immersive Virtual Reality.
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Evan Sitler-Bates is an entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of XpertVR, a consulting firm specializing in e-learning and virtual reality solutions. With over eight years of experience in the VR industry, he has established himself as a leader in leveraging technology for educational purposes and disaster preparedness.
In addition to leading XpertVR, Evan serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Brock University's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (Brock LINC), where he mentors student entrepreneurs and community startups, guiding them through the challenges of launching their ventures
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Jiani (00:02)
Welcome to MAGICademy podcast. Today with us is Evan, the founder of expert VR and a VR company that focuses on building innovative, immersive and highly learnable environment for interesting initiatives. And for example, firefighting, for example, building empathy and you name it. And he just completed a world tour and
bringing his solutions to a lot of places where learning and development are much needed in the virtual space. So welcome Evan to the podcast.
Evan Sitler-Bates (00:41)
Yeah, Jiani, thank you for having me. It's great to be back or be on.
Jiani (00:44)
Yeah, it's great to be back. I'll be waiting to hear about your stories after that world trip on the school bus that you converted.
Evan Sitler-Bates (00:53)
Yeah, I'll be honest to start off. I haven't done the full world tour. We've done a bunch of smaller tours over the past year, so we're still planning some larger tours.
Jiani (01:02)
That's great. As long as it's on the mission and as long as you're doing it, the process is the gold. Excellent. So if you were to introduce yourself in a unique way, how would you introduce yourself in 30 seconds? If you're open to that.
Evan Sitler-Bates (01:09)
Yes.
Yeah, I think in a unique way, I'm a 27 year old bus driver, entrepreneur, firefighter trainer, and manager of an amazing team. Yeah, I think that's how I would very quickly break it down if I were to put it in a few words. Yes.
Jiani (01:42)
I love it. There's a lot of layers right there. The bus driving sounds very fun as well. I love it. So why expert VR? What's, what was the...
tipping point, what was the kind of the moment do you like, yeah, let's, let's, let's do this.
Evan Sitler-Bates (02:02)
Well, it first started before expert VR, just being interested in virtual reality in general. So it was back in 2016. I was watching all kinds of YouTube videos and really loved the videos where you could hold up your phone and look around and see everything. 360 videos and a few YouTubers I was following was, we're starting to shoot with those videos, but the cameras were brand new.
lots of people had to set up like six GoPros all together to film these videos. And so I got interested in that. I'd always kind of been interested in video production. And that's what got me into VR, got me excited about the technology of how could you travel to other places in the world and experience other things from your home with a phone and just by having that video captured. And so I started filming those videos and quickly...
found out about virtual reality headsets. I don't think I even knew about virtual reality really before filming those videos. And that led to me and my now business partner, Drew, buying a headset together. He was the ambassador for the incubator that I was a part of. And we just bought a headset together to have fun and to see the videos in VR and experience all these other VR games that were out there. So that was the initial like excitement, the passion behind virtual reality and what became expert VR.
But I think really expert VR came out of us being entrepreneurs and needing money. And we spent $5 ,000 as broke university students to buy the computer and the headset. And it was like all the savings and credit card debt that we could take on. And we thought, how can we make money back on this? So we were just setting it up out front of our incubator and at different places around the school, first for free for people to try out.
Then we started charging some people for it. and then eventually we had one of our first mentors. she wasn't a mentor at the time, but Rashmi, her and her partner, Rick, they have a consulting company out of Niagara and they were just doing some classes at our local university and they walked by and they saw us playing games and they asked, could we use this for our classes? Could we use it for training and education? And.
Having that conversation really sparked an idea for us of we can do a lot more than just renting this out for games. And that's when we started Expert VR of how can we use this technology for more than games and for good. And yeah, it started with that soft skills consulting based training, then pivoted to research and now back into hard skills training.
Jiani (04:44)
Yeah, so it's really kind of built upon the demand and people's needs and curiosities and were there any particular kind of case studies that you were willing to or open to share? I was looking at your recent stories and there's like firefighter trainings and empathy, inclusive mindset training.
and there may be more. Can you share maybe a few? What kind of hard skills?
Evan Sitler-Bates (05:15)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think to share one on soft skills and one on hard skills, and I can share more if you want as well. Starting on the soft skill side of things, we built a simulation for an ethics professor at Brock University. And he's he's done all kinds of different games, I actually took his class when I went to university there. And he does all kinds of games and interactive things for students to really
understand ethical behavior in a business landscape. And one of the main case studies that any ethics class will study is about the Ford Pinto. And this was a car back in the 70s, that real thing that happened, this car, if you hit it at the wrong angle in a car crash, the whole car would explode because the gas tank was too close to a certain point in the car. And Ford at the time decided,
We're not going to recall the car. We're just going to pay the millions of dollars in lawsuits because it's going to be cheaper than recalling all of the cars. And now it's become this famous business case study that every student kind of goes through of how unethical that was. So we built the virtual reality version where instead of just reading a piece of paper and trying to understand what the executives went through at Ford and all the other people within the business went through at Ford at that time.
Now you're in virtual reality and it's set in present day where there's an electric vehicle that if in a car crash, the electric batteries will explode and injure or likely kill the passengers and people around it. And so you have to go through learning about that car, learning about the problem, talking to your different coworkers, learning about the company culture that you're in. And at the end, make a decision. Are you going to recall the car or put it out there and pay out the lawsuits?
And the research was supported by the Charter's Accountants, Charter Professional Accountants Association, CPA. And basically the research found that by going through virtual reality and doing this learning in real life, in a real life setting, it actually led to people being much more empathetic to what was happening in there instead of just reading it or watching videos. And so,
That was just a really interesting insight of how much more people, how much more connected people get to the content. And studies have come out past that or since then from PWC showing that people are actually 3 .75 times more emotionally connected to virtual reality content compared to any other traditional learning. So that was just an amazing case study to be able to offer. Now there's schools all across Ontario that are using that.
ethics simulation so that students get a better grasp of business ethics. Switching over to the hard skill side of things, like you mentioned firefighting, that's become our bread and butter. We've now released a firefighting product, ExpertFire, so fire departments are using it, colleges are using it to train their students. And there was a study or case study or example that we had.
with it in its early days. We were working with Conestoga College to develop the first version of this simulation. And we had a student go into a house and she was doing her search and rescue procedure, going around the house to rescue somebody. And she went into the basement of the house and found four victims in the basement. So as a firefighter, when you find more than one victim, basically you can only rescue one person at a time. And that's you and a partner.
Jiani (08:52)
Hmm.
Evan Sitler-Bates (09:02)
You have to make sure that you as a firefighter are safe before the people there, because if you're hurt, you can't help save those people. So she was kind of panicked and forgot what is the procedure here? How do I rescue these four people? What is who's the right person to rescue first, et cetera. And in that panic, in that confusion, she forgot that she was in the basement and thought she was in the garage. So then when she went to get out with the first victim, she was looking for the door to get out of the basement or sorry, to get out of the garage.
Jiani (09:09)
Mm.
Evan Sitler-Bates (09:31)
instead of looking for the stairs to get out of the basement. This led to her running out of air. She blacked out, like virtually blacked out. And now the other firefighters, her classmates were able to come in and rescue her and perform a May Day scenario where there's a May Day firefighter. So it was a great learning experience for her classmates. And then her taking off the headset, obviously she was safe, not hurt at all and a great learning opportunity.
Jiani (09:32)
Hmm.
Mm.
Hmm.
Evan Sitler-Bates (09:59)
with her professor there and her instructor to go through, what did you do right? What did you do wrong? Where did you mess up? and it's just amazing to see that impact because that's something that could happen in live training. And there are lots of firefighters that have died during training because they make these mistakes. And that's just horrible to hear that you could put somebody through virtual reality and make sure that they run into these mistakes before they run into them, either in the real world or even in real world training.
Jiani (10:07)
Hmm.
Mm.
Evan Sitler-Bates (10:31)
So yeah, those are two case studies.
Jiani (10:31)
I appreciate you sharing that. I think on the first case study,
The I would be curious and maybe our audience are curious as well is what is the underlining reason that when people are learning something in the virtual reality they tend to be more empathetic versus somebody just watching a movie or a video? Is there any particular reasons behind behind that?
Evan Sitler-Bates (11:06)
Yeah, there's, there's a few reasons. The main one is when you're in virtual reality, you're fully focused on the content you're learning and everything that you see, touch, feel here is all the, the virtual learning environment that you're in. Whereas when you're watching a video, I could stare at my screen in front of me and then I might look at my phone to the side or I may like get distracted looking out a window. All of those things might happen that may distract you. So you're not fully focused on the learning environment.
But then as well, because it's a fully 3D environment, you're interacting with avatars. And although they may look a little cartoony, we try to make them look very realistic, but they may still look a little cartoony. It does trick your brain after a little bit of like, okay, I'm in this virtual environment. I'm learning here. And these are, these are supposed to be real people that I'm interacting with them. So then in your brain, how you act is like you would act in the real world. And.
Yeah, that trick of your brain of interacting with that and being fully focused and being able to turn around and look around and see everything virtually just gets you that much connected with that much more connected with the content because you are interacting with a fully 3D learning environment that is built for you to learn in.
Jiani (12:25)
I like that. So it's kind of controlling your environment and also enable your brand to think that I'm in a environment and I'm interacting with those avatars. And for a period of time, they may feel that it's real. I did come across with research that...
There is ways for us to design a virtual environment to make it be as, to maintain the fidelity level as high as possible to kind of, I wouldn't say to persuade our brand to think that we are in this real situation and that kind of get us respond in a way that we would respond in a real world. There's also a concept.
Evan Sitler-Bates (13:06)
Yes.
Jiani (13:18)
called the embodied emotions. It's like we are learning through the movement as well.
Evan Sitler-Bates (13:24)
Yes, for sure. And yeah, I, I would say for anybody listening out there, like, there's, there's pros and cons, or there's different levers for you to pull on in the virtual reality world. And like, kind of one of the main ones to the point that you're talking about of how realistic it is, is the type of hardware you're working with. And if you're running this as like,
class and there's only a couple students coming in or if you're running it as a research study, you can likely have the highest end hardware out there and you can make everything look really realistic. Now, if you're trying to get something out to the mass public or you have hundreds of students that you're trying to get this to, then you're not going to want to have the highest end hardware that is hooked up to a computer in a stationery and can only be used in one room of the university. You're going to want to have
standalone headsets that don't have any wires and can move around to different classrooms or different areas within the university or even be sent home with students. And then you're going to have to have a little bit lower fidelity of what the quality of the virtual experience is. So there's those levers that you do have to play with. We feel like we've gotten to a good place where things look realistic and but they still work on those standalone devices. But it is something to consider when you're looking at
realism versus usability, I guess.
Jiani (14:50)
I love that. And in the second case study, you're talking about people going through this virtual reality training for firefighting. It feels like it's getting so real that people are really kind of emotionally invested. Will there be possibilities that people can potentially get too emotionally invested? And what would be the balance? Like how?
How would we get them emotionally invested, but not to the point that they're like, I feel like, I have this like bad memory in my mind. But even though it's in that virtual reality, was there some sort of a balance that we can strive for or?
Evan Sitler-Bates (15:36)
Yeah, I think it really depends on the person. I know I have some bad memories from some VR horror games, so definitely can see how that can happen. I would say like in the end, it's really just about reminding people when they go into virtual reality, just remind them that they are going into VR. This is a headset that they can take off at any time if they feel uncomfortable.
Hopefully there's somebody outside that's able to help them as well. If there's like settings they need to change to make it more comfortable and like with software wise. so just, just giving them that preemptive nudge that, Hey, if you feel uncomfortable or you feel too emotionally connected here, cause there are lots of like historic simulations where it's talking about, abuse to certain races or.
different wars or abuses to different genders, things along those lines that could really trigger people if they had experienced that in the past, let's say. So giving those reminders, giving those prompts before somebody goes into VR, I think is really the main way to do it because it's going to be different for everybody.
Jiani (16:48)
Mm.
Evan Sitler-Bates (16:54)
The only other way I would say that it can be done to kind of control that environment and make sure somebody is comfortable is by adding data into the simulation, being able to track things like heart rate or other physiological responses to the environment and to the scenario that they're in. That might be able to tell you outside of the simulation without any verbal cues. If somebody is feeling uncomfortable or stressed or anything along those lines where then.
Jiani (16:54)
Hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Evan Sitler-Bates (17:21)
Maybe you have controls to turn down the how intense the simulation is, or maybe you just know that, they're at a certain stress level or uncomfortable level that I should just pull them out of the headset. That does get a lot more complex, though.
Jiani (17:36)
Yeah, because you have to like, instead of VR, additionally to the VR, you probably need to have some sort of like, like data collector point to install within the AR VR set.
Evan Sitler-Bates (17:40)
Thank you.
Yeah, there has been some good advancements. I've been talking to a researcher at University of Waterloo and he uses different watches, different fitness trackers, some custom ones that can track most of it without being on your head and they're pretty non -invasive to put on. So there definitely are ways to do it where it's not too complex, but it does require some custom coding and
additional things to be added into the simulation.
Jiani (18:24)
I really like that. And were there particular, you shared two case studies. What are some frameworks that when we think about VR and learning development and skill training that we need to use? What kind of framework can we use to guide our decisions? If we're learning this skill, I think it's ideal opportunity for us to explore virtual reality. Were there any sort of like framework that you would?
recommend folks to consider.
Evan Sitler-Bates (18:54)
Yeah, there's one for sure. There's one framework I would recommend and then one just recommendation. So starting with the framework is the DICE framework. Jeremy Balanson, he's a famed VR researcher. He put out this framework and basically DICE, D -I -C -E stands for dangerous, impossible, counterintuitive or expensive. So.
Basically, when you're thinking about, should I do this in virtual reality? It should fall into one or more of those buckets. If it doesn't, then you should likely be doing that training and education in the real world or with a different training method. So obviously number one is a dangerous. If you're going into fight a fire or fly a plane and you don't have any experience doing that, it's a really good idea to get some training in a simulation beforehand. Is it impossible? Like if you're doing.
history or geography tours where you're taking people back in time or you want to take them to a different planet or just to a different location on the earth for them to explore, that's likely going to be impossible. Time travel is obviously impossible, but traveling around the world for a class, yeah, science fiction, but even just like traveling around the world for a class, I guess that falls into the expensive bucket, but also kind of impossible. Not practical exactly.
Jiani (20:03)
You pass. Science fiction.
Hmm. Not practical also.
Evan Sitler-Bates (20:20)
counterintuitive, basically. Yeah. So that one, that one, I have a hard time explaining as well. I think one of the, the ideas there is like, Hey, we could train like for paramedics, let's say we could train on the ambulance that is available to us. There's an ambulance that we can book out for the day and train on how to use all the different tools within the ambulance, how to drive it, how to.
Jiani (20:22)
I'm curious about that. What is the country of Tune?
Evan Sitler-Bates (20:50)
open all the doors, what goes inside every cubby and every drawer that's within an ambulance. But you're also then taking that off the road for a day where it could be used to rescue people and help save lives for that day. So it's counterproductive, it's counterintuitive to take that off of the road when you could have a virtual version to train on so that you don't have to take it off the road. And then lastly,
kind of touches on some of the other examples that I've already given there, but the expensive slash rare. Yeah. The other option in that paramedic example would be to buy an ambulance that is owned by a college and is available there 24 seven for students to use, but that's at a very expensive expense to buy a whole ambulance and have it fully kitted out just to have it sitting there and be used a few days or a few weeks out of the year for students to train on.
or similarly, if you're needed to ship, some sort of an ambulance or a large piece of machinery around to different locations to train people on how to use it. Just the shipping costs is going to be very expensive for a large piece of machinery or a vehicle like an ambulance. So very expensive. So yeah, dice, following into one of those four buckets is how you want to look at VR.
Jiani (22:00)
No, no, no.
Yeah, yeah. And also another example that I can think about is like, like healthcare training. It's very expensive to set the scenery and get the patient actor, get the supporting actors and setting things as you want it to. So it makes much more sense of just doing that. And then it does not eliminate the need to...
do a real scenario -based journey, I think it helps you to get prepared, at least get multiple exposures before we get to the real situation. That makes us learn, make the learning more effective too, like the utilization of the resources.
Evan Sitler-Bates (23:05)
For sure. And, and like, that's a great point. Like, I don't think virtual reality should be replacing any live training that's out there. Like our firefighters, they're going through our training at least three times before they go do a live burn training. We're not trying to replace that live burn training, but it ensures that they're fully prepared and they're actually able to focus on more advanced skills when they go into that live burn training. Or similarly with your healthcare example.
students should still be going and doing a practical and learning alongside other nurses or other doctors or what have you in the healthcare space. And like that's possible from the get go. It's not impossible. It's not necessarily counterintuitive. It's probably not that expensive to have a student there helping you as a nurse. It's probably not that dangerous for them as a nursing student to be there, but it probably is pretty dangerous you as a patient to be
getting a surgery done or getting help from a group of nurses and one of them has never even seen a patient before. So if they can do that training in virtual reality and then still do that practical afterwards, they're going to be much more prepared, just like you said.
Jiani (24:16)
Yeah, definitely. And I think, so moving forward into the future a little bit, how would you envision future of virtual reality training with all the advanced technologies that's like our Gen, Gen AI, Web 3 .0 and the brand machine interactions where you can put the chip and you just like learn something new or.
Evan Sitler-Bates (24:46)
He he.
Jiani (24:46)
develop new capabilities. How would you, what would, yeah, what would, I don't know, what would the future look like?
Evan Sitler-Bates (24:52)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I can put most of those together. I would say the brain computer interface might have some controls for VR in the future. I would say for the most part, at least in my opinion, that is like the next iteration after VR that like, I don't know if I can download like the matrix, I can learn a new language or learn.
Jiani (24:58)
Thank you.
Evan Sitler-Bates (25:17)
any skill by just downloading it. I probably don't need virtual reality for education anymore. So I was, yeah, I would love that. Yes, if it's safe for sure. So exciting technology. I think it's cool what all those companies are doing, but yeah, not too much relation to virtual reality necessarily looking at everything else though. I think number one is building
Jiani (25:21)
I would vote for that if it's safe.
Evan Sitler-Bates (25:46)
quote unquote, the metaverse or just large virtual spaces where people can interact just like they do on the internet today. And then the education space and what we're trying to build towards eventually collaboratively with other companies as well is kind of an educational quote unquote metaverse, or let's just call it an educational hub where I can picture there being a generic city that has their downtown core with skyscrapers and all of that. Then there's a suburban area.
There's a wildlife area, there's an industrial area, all of the areas that you would see in any city or town, as well as like farming land, so any like rural areas as well. Having all of those in one central learning hub where you can have firefighters, police officers, paramedics, all responding to a large disaster or emergency together. And then after that emergency happens, you could have carpentry students and construction students.
learning on how to repair a building because of that emergency. You would then have legal students that are taking that case of what happened in that emergency and taking it to court. So having all of those industries interacting together in that large learning hub where you can train by yourself or you can train with others. That's where I kind of picture things going. We want to do it for the first responder space and then build upon that. And it's a ways away, but that's.
Jiani (27:04)
I love it.
Evan Sitler-Bates (27:11)
That's what we're trying to build towards and where I see the future of education heading, involving some of the other technologies that you commented on or brought up. AI is going to be a huge part of that for all of the, the avatars that you're interacting with, as well as I think there will be AI that's like tracking all of the learning outcomes. And sorry, I mentioned earlier, Dice was kind of like the framework that I look at. Learning outcomes is the other tip.
If you're building a virtual reality simulation for education, make sure it fits into the Dice framework. But then what are the learning outcomes that are going to come out of this? And always have that as your primary focus of why you're building the simulation and why each feature is being added. It should be tied back to those learning outcomes. So in this future of education, there should be AIs that know what are the learning outcomes this student is trying to learn.
And is testing you or just tracking data in the background to understand, are you reaching those learning outcomes and which ones at which pace? You might have learned learning outcome one and two all the way to a hundred percent or 98%. But you've been falling behind and only learned 50 % of learning outcome three. So then the AI should be able to adjust that simulation or the scenario that you're in.
to more focus on learning outcome three so that you get more experience with that and can fully learn that learning outcome. And then the last technology that you mentioned, Web3, I think blockchain is how like a lot of this data is gonna be tracked and made sure that it's securely stored, as well as I see a future where we don't need to have resumes or...
diplomas that are a piece of paper and degrees that are a piece of paper. Instead, there are NFTs that maybe they look cool. They have a 3D model that's attached to them or they have a board ape that's attached to them, whatever. It doesn't matter what the art looks like. But there is that then verifies what you did. So I've gone through and I've got my business degree and now I have.
this NFT that represents the business degree, where I got it, when I got it, what I learned throughout that whole process. So that when I go to get a job, I just say, yep, here's my MetaMask wallet. And you can see all the NFTs that I've collected for the different courses that I took and for the full degree that I got. And you can verify that these haven't been edited, haven't been changed. They're registered on the blockchain. And now I know.
what degree this person has.
Jiani (29:52)
I love that. It's like education is no longer sitting in the classroom and learning the content. It's fully embodied learning. And it's not only fully embodied learning, it's learning within the ecosystem. So it's like connecting learners to this bigger picture, the societies. And that can potentially also foster a sense of
responsibility and the sense of ethics because everybody is connected. It's not just me sitting in the classroom with a few folks and a teacher. I like how you kind of envision the Web3 as a way to showcase people's authenticity and training and...
You can also see, you know, this person went through this training and versus, you know, this person just went through a test. And I think it feels like people who went through a real simulation can be more persuasive because there's a lot of things that the real simulation can test informally versus a test.
Evan Sitler-Bates (31:08)
for sure. Plus, I would even say like, I would agree that the virtual reality version is the best version there. But the NFTs and Web3 type technology would really prove that where now you can see, see, okay, this 50 % of the population, they went through the virtual reality training. And here's the NFTs that they've achieved.
in their career now because of that versus here's the people that went through other types of learning or didn't do all of the same learning and here's the NFTs that they've achieved or the achievements that they've gotten in their career and it obviously takes a long time but after 10 -20 years you're able to see like okay this is how the two populations are comparing this is the type of education people should be taking or doing versus the other one.
Jiani (31:57)
I love that. That's beautiful. And, were there potential challenges or risks that we need to pay attention to?
Evan Sitler-Bates (32:08)
There's always risks out there. I think virtual reality, especially today, one of the biggest ones is accessibility. And that comes down to accessibility just in general of the controls and different people with different disabilities might not be able to, well, if you're blind, most simulations, obviously you can't see them. VR is very visual. There are some simulations and we've made a lot of improvements that.
If you're partially blind, you can still use them. So there are like ways, but most simulations aren't accessible for that. Controllers might not be as accessible depending on different disabilities you may have. Or just in general, there is a slight population. I think it's four to 6 % of the population gets motion sickness in virtual reality. So you might not even want to put on a VR headset.
We're making strides, us as expert VR, but also many other companies, especially big companies like Meta are making strides to minimize that, but it still is a problem. And we want to make sure that if we're making education that is the best education out there, or making it mandatory for people to take, we want to make sure that everyone can actually take it and use that tool. So I would say that's like concern number one.
Past that, I think privacy is a big concern. There's been some studies that have come out that just by tracking how your head moves in VR and how your controllers move in virtual reality, they can actually predict to a certain confidence level, I don't know what it is, but to a certain confidence level, they can predict future diseases that you may have like Parkinson's and things along those lines. So on one hand, that's great. Like, okay, let's find out.
Jiani (33:53)
Mm -hmm.
Hmm.
Evan Sitler-Bates (34:00)
like in your twenties, we could find out if you're going to have a disease in your, in your sixties. But at the same time, somebody sells that data to insurance company and they're like, well, you're going to have a disease in 40 years. We're not going to insure you. Obviously that becomes a big problem. So the privacy of how that data is, is used and shared. And I think just in general, giving a lot of control to the consumer for how that data is collected.
number one and then how that data can be shared afterwards is very important. Those are the two main concerns that I would have.
Jiani (34:33)
Mm -hmm.
That's great. I think it's super valid and I feel like no matter how fast the technology develops, it's always coming back to that humanity perspective. What is right, what is wrong, how do we protect the vulnerable, how do we at the same time progress and evolve us as a species with all the technologies that's there.
Evan Sitler-Bates (34:59)
For sure. And that reminds me too, like I talk about accessibility on how to use the technology and being able to access it. But like, I think a big problem here as well is like in, in so many developing countries around the world, they're just getting access to smartphones and smartphones are becoming something that most people around the world have daily access to. But.
VR obviously isn't anywhere near there. And if this becomes a technology where people are learning 10 times faster, not saying that that's a stat, I think it's four times faster is the stat. So if people are learning four times faster in virtual reality compared to their peers that don't have access to VR, then that's just a big disparity there where we need to make sure that everyone has access to this technology. And if everyone does, then it can unlock an amazing
wealth of knowledge around the world, but without that access, it's not possible.
Jiani (35:55)
Yeah, yeah. And also I recently saw a product that actually helps people who are visually impaired through the verbal cues and descriptions to help them to see better. So that could also be where the AI can play a huge role in terms of creating accessibility in the virtual reality world. Nice.
Evan Sitler-Bates (36:22)
for sure.
Jiani (36:24)
Great, as we move into the magic part of the conversation, I would give a brief recap for our audience. So, so far we've talked about the story of Evan and how the founding stories look like when he decided to fund Expert VR. And we talked about a few interesting case studies. One is focused on soft skill. The other one is focused on the hard skill. One is firefighting. And then the other one is...
on the... what's the other one? Sorry.
Evan Sitler-Bates (36:58)
the ethics side of things.
Jiani (36:59)
the ethics, the business ethics of decision making. We also talked about the framework, it's called DICE. You should dial back to see what DICE is. And then we also talked about the embodied emotions and how learning in the virtual reality can actually potentially expedite the learning time and also potentially make your learning more efficient. We also talked about the future.
how virtual reality learning can marry all the other technologies like Web 3 .0, artificial intelligence, and brand machine interactions, and how Evan is envisioning a super interconnected virtual world where learning does not happen just in a classroom, but also happening in the bigger ecosystems that's very much like the...
the real world out there. And we also talked about some potential risks like data privacy and all the ethics and accessibility and how can we protect the folks who need to have the protection while also advanced learning for everyone in the planet. And as we move into the magic piece, so,
Evan would be curious to hear what did you enjoy doing when you were 11 or 16 years old and that time just disappeared for you.
Evan Sitler-Bates (38:39)
Yeah, I think a few things just in general. I was never really into like video games. I didn't really have too much TV around my house when I was a kid. So when I was indoors, I loved playing with Lego and being creative with Lego. I didn't really have too many Lego sets where I was building something specific. I just had a lot of Lego to build my own creations. So I think really helped to build my creativity as a kid.
and similarly, my friends and I, we spent most of our time playing outdoors, whether that was just like playing grounders and different games on a jungle gym or tag and things like that around, around the, the forest in my backyard and things along those lines. so yeah, just love being outdoors and that side of things. I think what really resonates with where I am today is the entrepreneurial side of things.
I think I was 11, 11 or 12 when I started a dog walking company. Before that, I had all sorts of lemonade stands throughout the summer and selling cookies at the end of my driveway alongside lemonade. I had a curb painting business where we would paint house numbers on curbs so that if...
paramedics or other first responders were driving down a street and they couldn't see the house number on the house. They could just look at the curb and see the house number there. So also connects to the first responders space that I'm in right now, I guess. But yeah, starting all sorts of business from the age of, I don't know, probably six or seven. First major business was the dog walking and pet care business when I was 11. I call it major, but not really. And then many other businesses after that. So.
Yeah, I was just always entrepreneurial and loved starting businesses. Not like obviously kind of liked the money, but really just as something to do and learning a new skill and just getting out there. I know my friends and I probably like every kid would always say, I'm bored. What can we do? And we would never come up with something to do. So doing a business where we could make a little bit of money doing something was always exciting.
Jiani (40:55)
Yeah, and in service of fellow humans and providing values and learning, learning by doing, learning by servicing. It's amazing.
Evan Sitler-Bates (41:03)
for sure and I would say even value for ourselves, well, not for most of those businesses, but at least for the dog walking one. Like I was, I had a couple of cats growing up. I love cats, but I always wanted a dog as well. And so I, but I was never allowed to have one too expensive, too much responsibility, et cetera. So being able to start a dog walking business where I could spend time with dogs as a kid was like a way to do that and also make some money doing it.
Jiani (41:31)
I love it. What role do you think Childlike Wonder play in your life as a founder?
Evan Sitler-Bates (41:39)
Yeah, I think for me, it's a childlike wonder or just creativity in general still plays a huge role. I am a, a business founder. I don't really have the technical skills that our team has. So being able to come in with this like creative mindset, looking at problems. I don't, don't want to say I do it too regularly, but I'll come into a problem where our, our developers are.
are looking at something with their developer lens and I can come in, not with a business lens, but with just like a creative open mind kind of lens and look at the problem that they're facing and say like, well, have you thought about doing this? Or I saw this article about X, Y, or Z. Have you looked at that article? And like I said, it doesn't happen all the time or super often, but.
I find that when I can come in and have that lens, it at least changes up the conversation, if not presents a solution that's going to work that they would have never thought of or would have taken a long time to think of just looking at it with their developer lens on.
Jiani (42:47)
I love that. So it's kind of like seeing the problems with fresh pair of eyes and finding the hidden perspectives or the past less troubled and maybe that holds the key to problem solving. Love that.
Evan Sitler-Bates (43:03)
Exactly. Yeah. So seeing that both on the development side, as well as just in business day to day, like we're always facing challenges. And like we talked about, or briefly mentioned, and me saying that I'm a bus driver, like last year we were trying to think like, what's a new way to market expert VR. And it's like, we get a million emails a day. We talked to a million people a day that are like, do some ads on LinkedIn or try our cold email outreach and all of these different things, which.
We do try all those traditional methods, but then I was like, well, what if we like built a bus that we could travel around to different locations and demo VR, but also act as a place for us to live and sleep in when we're traveling to all these locations and also a big billboard for expert VR, because we're going to paint the outside with our branding and everything. And then we ended up doing that. And.
We haven't been able to do the big tours that we were planning, but we've been able to take it to a bunch of smaller tours and one week kind of tours and road trips. And it's been very successful there and helping our online marketing and being able to excite people and saying, Hey, the bus is coming by your location. We'd love to stop in and chat with you. So yeah, yeah. Childlike wonder on that side as well.
Jiani (44:22)
I love that. It just makes business life much more enjoyable and fun. That's great. Were there any particular challenges that you have to overcome that helped to shape who you are as a leader?
Evan Sitler-Bates (44:30)
Yes.
Yeah, there's there's always challenges every every day comes with new challenges or new opportunities. I would say like one of one of the biggest ones that kind of goes against my last point of childlike wonder and creativity, or at least just is different from that and a big learning thing, especially over the past year. But I think I've been learning it for multiple years, and it's finally just actually hitting home or setting in.
is like having contracts and having like things written down of exactly what you're promising to do, what you're thinking you want to do. We've had multiple clients where we go in with more of that creative type of mindset and we're like, yeah, let's just promise them the world. And then we're going to build those things. And then we notice, hey, like we're way out of scope for the project or.
We were running out of time to get this done when it needs to be delivered next week. And one, either we've now we've over promised and we need to get the work done, or we've just mentioned some things and we didn't really have a concrete contract writing down what we were going to do. And now the clients are expecting those things. And we're like, well, that was kind of just an idea that we threw out there, but we never really solidified it. But because we didn't have it written down.
they're really expecting it now. So we've seen that on the business client side of things. We've seen it on the employee side of things as well. So yeah, I think just in general, even though it's kind of boring, having contracts, having things written down so that everybody's on the same page and agreeing on everything can be very helpful as a business leader or owner.
Jiani (46:34)
Yeah, much more needed and that requires a lot of planning and thinking, thinking through and also experience and probably won't get it right for the first time but maybe next a damn done or something. Excellent. So overall, what do you think is your magic?
Evan Sitler-Bates (46:45)
Definitely not. Yes.
What is my magic? I think it still does come back to that creativity and passion that I have for virtual reality and just life in general. I'm just so excited by this technology. I experienced it for the first time in 2016 and I still light up when I put on a headset. Like I at least go into VR once a week because we have our team meetings in VR once a week, but usually I'm in VR.
I would say three, four times throughout the week, whether it's playing poker with some friends that live in different places around the world, or we're going to fight a dragon on a castle in VR, all of these different things. Like it's, it's just so cool that I can pick up a headset that's laying beside me and be transported to a whole different world that I still feel this passion to want to share that with anybody that will take the time to experience it.
And then especially when it comes to education and training, it's like, I just see how I was in school and how I was so bored by a lot of the topics that I was taught. And I see that across the board with every student that I talk to, no matter if they're studying something that might be considered boring, like accounting, or they're studying something that might be exciting, like firefighting. There are always...
not so exciting topics in what you're studying. And if we can change that in virtual reality where you can be excited almost all the time and you're learning from everything that you're doing and you understand why you're learning it and you understand the feedback that you're getting and how you can improve. It just makes education that much better for everybody. And I think about it all the time that there are so many problems in the world.
today and they're having so many problems for forever. And really the only thing that's going to solve every problem is education. And if we can educate the next generation so that there are better scientists to find the cure for cancer, so that there are better politicians, so that we don't have so much fighting throughout politics or in war and all these different things, the world's going to be a better place. And that starts with education.
Jiani (49:14)
I love that, planting that seed. And also for folks who are already working and leading companies and leading teams, there are still opportunities for current leaders to reframe their thinking, re -educate or relearn or unlearn and learn it with a fresh pair of eyes and...
Evan Sitler-Bates (49:16)
this.
Jiani (49:38)
Learn from like a more immersive environment rather than just read this paper or watch this video. So I would build upon what you are saying. I think the learning is always Accessible across the age groups and wherever they are in the school area or in the workspace it's always ways for us to learn
Evan Sitler-Bates (50:05)
couldn't agree more. Yeah, like, like, most of the people that we work with now are actually fire departments. So firefighters that are between the ages of sometimes we have like, training firefighters that are as low as 16 years old, they're not actually fighting fires, but as low as that age, all the way up to chiefs and people that have been in firefighting into their like 70s. And this is technology that we're building to be accessible so that whether you're 16 or you're 76,
you can jump into virtual reality and start learning. And you're right, there's always new things to learn and like using firefighting as an example, you might've fought a thousand fires, but now there's electric vehicles and there are wildfires that are larger than anything people have ever seen because of climate change. And you can now face those things in virtual reality and learn how to fight those types of fires and learn those skills that are needed for these new types of fires.
So that even if you've been in the world for 50 plus years as a 76 year old, you're still able to learn new things and you're picking up this accessible technology.
Jiani (51:14)
I love that. Reactivate our neuroplasticity. Love it. Thank you, Evan, so much for sharing your perspective, your stories, and your vision into the future with us today. And it has been a blast and a blissful moment.
Evan Sitler-Bates (51:17)
Yes, yes. Love it.
Jiani (51:36)
shared with you and for folks who are interested and to want to learn more, all the Evans contact information and links are attached below in the show notes. So we encourage you to get connected and build new connections and build new possible features, a version of future, whichever you want to call it. So thank you so much Evan for coming here.
Evan Sitler-Bates (51:58)
Thank you.
Jiani, thank you for having me on. This has been amazing. I feel the magic. And yeah, for anybody that's interested in getting connected, feel free to reach out. Like Jiani said, in the show notes, there'll be all the links. LinkedIn is where I'm most active. I post there at least once a day. So feel free to reach out and have a good chat.
Disclaimer
The content shared is to highlight the passion and wonder of our guests. It is not professional advice. Please read our evidence-based research to help you develop your unique understanding.
AI technologies have been utilized to assist in creating content derived from genuine conversations. All generated material undergoes thorough human review to ensure accuracy, relevance, and quality.
