Feeding the fish: Interaction design to support listening to accounts of marginalization

We present a study using an immersive, virtual reality experience designed to deepen understandings of gender and sexuality-based marginalization in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) as complex experiences with individual and systemic di-mensions. A challenge to teaching about marginalization is that learners might disengage from the unpleasant experience of listening to first-hand accounts of discrimination. A further challenge is encouraging learners to acknowledge their role in producing those harms. Through our design of playful, embodied interactions in vir-tual reality, the app effectively supports learners to remain engaged in listening to and learning about the marginalized other. As part of a design study, the first author interviewed participants over Zoom as they interacted with the VR game. In our analysis, we describe our interaction designs and connect these to analysis showing how participants reflect upon and use the interactions to move through the difficulties of listening to another's stories of marginalization.