Google: VR DEI training

Four VR scenarios built from real incidents at Google, co-designed with its DEI team, and written up in a peer-reviewed CHI paper.

Download the Google research paper PDF

A facilitator beside a participant in the office.

Co-designed with Google's own people

Google's DEI team co-designed a VR training experience on diversity, equity and inclusion with PTR. Leonie Sanderson led the work.

It appears in a peer-reviewed paper co-authored by three Google researchers and PTR co-founder Leonie Sanderson, presented at CHI EA '24, the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in May 2024.

What Google's DEI team wanted

Empathy and self-awareness that lead to practical action, rather than training that feels passive and a long way from anyone's lived experience.

A colleague, arms folded, waiting for your reply.

Lectures and checklists were not moving anyone

Most DEI training describes bias. Google wanted its people to feel what it is like to be underestimated on a call, and then to practise what a bystander can do about it.

That needed the incident itself, not a slide about it.

"We could see how powerful VR is at giving people 'a-ha moments' and wanted to create training that has an impact on people's behaviours."

Leonie Sanderson, PTR's co-founder, arms folded and laughing. Leonie Sanderson
Co-founder, People Tech Revolution. Startup Spotlight, Aerospace Xelerated, 2023

What PTR built

Four original VR scenarios, co-designed by PTR with 13 Google employee volunteers from Google's DEI program between 2021 and 2023, each drawn from a real incident shared by Google employees.

Three colleagues sit at a round table in a simulated meeting room, one wearing the headset, one turned toward a blank wall screen as if a remote colleague were there. — A hybrid meeting, one colleague on the screen.

A man wearing a VR headset faces a floating panel of three written replies in a meeting room, two colleagues at the table beyond, choosing his response. — Three replies to choose from, at the table.

Two colleagues stand in a lunch area with a floating panel of responses between them, seen through the headset. — Deciding whether to step in, beside a colleague.

Two points of view, three choices

Each scenario runs the same situation twice: first from the person being underestimated, then from a bystander. At the end the trainee chooses to call it out, call it in, or ignore it.

The discussion stays out of the app, as a live facilitated debrief.

A man in a blue shirt speaks across a team room with a floating panel of replies in front of him, a colleague behind, seen through the headset. — A teammate makes his case, replies in view.

Two colleagues stand in an open team area with a floating panel of replies between them, seen through the headset. — Two colleagues, and the reply you give.

A participant wearing a headset stands at the end of a boardroom table, addressing four seated simulated colleagues of different ages, practising inclusive leadership. — Addressing four colleagues around a table.

How the first cohort ran

A QA phase of 7 testing sessions with 20 volunteer testers, who reported over 100 issues before the training was refined. Then, in September 2023, the first cohort.

Inside the simulation: three executives sit at the far end of a boardroom table facing the viewer, one mid-sentence, two listening, empty chairs nearest under a blank wall screen. — Three executives at the boardroom table.

Senior security staff, headsets on

32 members of Google's security team senior staff were invited and 26 accepted. 23 of them used Meta Quest 2 headsets and 3 used a desktop version.

The scenarios ran first; the conversation about them ran afterwards, in the room, with a facilitator.

What the paper reports

Results from two groups: the QA testers, and the first training cohort.

A woman wearing a headset raises one hand mid-sentence in a room with a rust-red wall and a window onto a city, a VR workplace scenario. — Giving feedback to a team, headset on.

91%

of the QA testers who answered the optional survey said the scenarios felt real (10 of 11)

4.7 / 5

average satisfaction among the 7 trainees who returned the post-training survey (94%)

82%

average agreement that the training was useful for understanding DEI issues (4.1 / 5)

82%

average agreement that it was better than Google's standard DEI training (4.1 / 5)

All but one QA tester found the VR format effective at creating an empathic response.Bursztein, Brown, Sanderson and Kelley, CHI EA '24

What participants said

Two of the responses quoted in the paper.

"Microaggressions felt more real."

Training participant
Quoted in the CHI 2024 paper

"Made empathy more real via experience"

Training participant
Quoted in the CHI 2024 paper

An officer faces a mirrored version of himself across a steel table in a plain room, rehearsing a conversation he will have for real. — A conversation across a table, rehearsed first.

What the authors say it does not prove

Another participant described experiencing a situation "from the perspective of a member of a historically underrepresented group."

The authors describe the findings as preliminary and self-reported: a single company, a small optional-response sample, and no comparison or control group.

The same moment in any office

Google's scenarios were built from Google incidents. The underestimated colleague on a call, the comment in a standup, the meeting nobody speaks up in: every organisation has its own list, and these are the rooms PTR builds for it.