News · August 2026
What the Google VR study actually found
A peer-reviewed CHI 2024 paper on VR DEI training at Google is encouraging. The most useful line in it is not the headline number, though: it is what one tester said once the group discussion was taken away.
Bias at work, seen from both sides
Each scenario puts a trainee inside a bias incident: a colleague whose expertise is doubted because of how they look, a new starter left out of the group’s shared references. The trainee plays it once as each person.
Google DEI volunteers built the scenarios from 2021 to 2023, and PTR co-designed them with Leonie Sanderson leading. The CHI 2024 paper is by Elie Bursztein, Karla Brown and Patrick Gage Kelley of Google, with Leonie Sanderson.
What the testing measured
Development testing, then Google’s first live cohort.
Why the authors kept the debrief
When testers were asked how important the post-VR group discussion was, 9 of 11 rated it useful or very useful. One put it more bluntly than any statistic: "Without the discussion component, [this training] doesn't have any more value than past [styles of] DEI training."
The authors took that seriously. Their own gloss is careful: this feedback "supports the hypothesis that having a post session is critical to the success of VR DEI training." They allocated 25 minutes to the debrief in every session that followed.
The debrief is part of the training
Every PTR session runs in a small group, with a facilitator and a structured debrief after the headset comes off: the part the paper’s authors call critical to VR DEI training. How a facilitated session runs.
What the authors want to improve
The open questions the paper raises. Each tile opens the PTR page that takes it further.
What this means if you're considering VR training
The study followed one team at one company, with sample sizes in the tens, reporting feedback about a single session.
Participants rated the discussion afterwards highly in the study. The authors treated it as essential and built 25 minutes of it into every session.
Ask any VR training provider, us included, what happens in the room once the headset comes off. See our summary of the paper, the case study this training became, or how PTR facilitates VR training.
Want to talk through what this evidence means for your own program?
Related PTR work
The case study, the delivery approach and the wider evidence this reading connects to.
Sources
The Google CHI paper, with links to PTR's summary and the paper PDF.
Leveraging Virtual Reality to Enhance Diversity and Inclusion training at Google
Bursztein, E., Brown, K., Sanderson, L., and Kelley, P. G. (2024). The peer-reviewed paper this article is a close reading of.
