Real World Constraints

See the following link: https://labs.ece.uw.edu/community/RWC/

### Addressing Potential Environmental Impacts

For potential environmental effects that this project might have, the biggest impacts that we might have are contributing to the growing supplies of electronic waste (e-waste) and creating more unnecessary plastics. However, if we can design the project in such a way that it uses sustainable plastics and other materials that are made to last, then we can reduce the amount of e-waste we contribute. Essentially, we will be making a product that is sustainably produced and made to last so that it does not break easily or become obsolete with slight improvements, allowing it to be used for many years before it is potentially thrown out.

### Addressing Potential Ethical Effects

The main ethical concern that we could identify is if the data that is gathered by our device is being tracked or used in ways that violate the user's personal security. The first issue is mostly self-explanatory, and we plan to address it by having a transparent user agreement with the device upon usage so that the user will know exactly what our device is doing.

### Addressing Potential Safety Effects

For safety issues, the main one that we see is to what extent our device should be monitoring the user's health. In essence, we see it as the idea that if our device notices extreme heart rates or breathing rates that could be negatively impactful on the user's health, what sort of actions can we implement in our device to utilize this monitoring so thtat the user's health isn't impacted. This could be solved by going to the VR app developers and assisting in implementing software checks into their apps to notify the user of potential health risks using the real-time feedback from our device.

This last issue is also potientially our best positive safety effect that our project could have- making VR a safer experience for the user by keeping them from over-exerting themselves during usage.

### How we Can Address Above Issues in the Design Process

I think that overall, the above environmental concerns can absolutely be addressed during the design process- by planning to use high-quality recycled plastics in the design, we can reduce the negative environmental impacts our project might have by making our device not produce unnecessary plastics or electronics that will be thrown away before the device's lifetime is fully spent.

As for the other two issues, they are mostly things that we can address after the design phase- by working with VR software devs to implement transparent interactions with our device that will tell the user about its effects and how it can help keep them safe during usage.

### Users' Potential Concerns

As we stated above, we believe that the main concerns users might have when using the device are about how the data being tracked is being used. One of the main VR hardware developers currently is Occulus, owned by META (formerly FaceBook), who already has been in some scandals for their usage of data analytics and tracking. As this product is meant to be used with a VR headset, it will more than likely be used with an Occulus headset, meaning that users who already have some reservations about META's data analytics may feel apprehensive about our the data our product gathers being used with an Occulus headset.