VReanimate — Non-verbal guidance and learning in virtual reality

First aid saves lives and reanimation is an important part of it. We developed a virtual reality (VR) application, VReanimate, that teaches about this aspect of first aid in a controlled digital environment. In this paper we present its non-verbal approach to guiding as many people as possible through the VR experience. In the first part of this paper, we describe the conceptual and implementational details of this approach that is based on showing ghost controllers and headsets to convey the necessary interfacing information in the virtual environment. These projected controllers and headsets were augmented with pictographic user feedback to direct and reinforce the users' learnings. In the second part of this paper, we elaborate on our evaluation of the non-verbal approach to teaching first aid implemented by VReanimate. Conducting a qualitative study, we found that the non-verbal approach was able to impart knowledge to all testers. None of the participants had problems with the developed concepts and most of them understood the pictographic language without difficulties. Finally, the paper discusses the potential positive impact of the developed application VReanimate in real world first aid scenarios.