The Metaverse Fluency Expert
Caitlin Krause is a metaverse fluency expert, facilitator, poet and technologist. She is the founder of design studio MindWise, with a focus on co-creating experiences that inspire wonder and awe. She has worked with universities and individuals worldwide, from Stanford to Meta to the U.S. State Department and is a lecturer about Digital Wellbeing by Design at Stanford University. Anelia Heese from the AUREA community team joined her for a conversation on digital wellness, XR, and meaningful connection.
When you ask Caitlin Krause the classic “What do you do for work?” question, she responds with a warm smile: “I’m comfortable with a little bit of curiosity and ambiguity. I am a technologist, and I’m also a poet. I have an MFA in Creative Writing, and I was also a programmer. When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut, because I’ve always been fascinated by maths and science. I studied aeronautics and engineering in university, and I was also an English major.”
Creating Meaningful Experiences
In an ecosystem critics love to call “the rich white kid of technology”, Caitlin realised that a need for human connection should be at the centre. Her Mindful by Design methodology helps individual leaders and teams leverage mindfulness, storytelling and design principles to connect more deeply with their audiences and communities. She is an active transmedia designer supporting organisations learning how to enable tech to support health and wellness. Best of all, she does so using creativity, imagination, wonder and awe.
Many XR experts say that VR headsets still resemble the feeling of “wearing scuba masks” that can make you feel “cut off from your surroundings in a way that’s just not natural.” The empathy in her voice is perceptible as she explains: “My work often involves groups not understanding the headset, or the hardware, at the onset. We experts tend to forget that putting the headset on is like a trust fall. Think of swimming: some people are really scared to learn to swim, because they can’t bear the thought of getting their face wet. Anytime we do something that covers your face, there needs to be a lot of trust to combat the fear of this new environment. I love creating meaningful interactions in a space that can also be very confusing and intimidating.”
AUREA Memories
She fondly remembers a networking session hosted by Jacob Lowenstein in Spatial for AUREA#4 attendees: “We had a dance party in Spatial where participants could explore different levels and music to play with. That experience showed that you can teach community engagement without explicitly calling it a ‘session on community engagement.’ You create interactive bonds through sharing experiences.”
This starts with seemingly insignificant participatory cues in the digital realm: “When I teach virtual parts of my “Digital Wellbeing: Designing Healthy Relationships With Tech” course at Stanford, we’re sometimes on 2D screens. I tell my students that they can change their physical positions. They choose if they want video enabled. We tend to hunch over our screens when we join a Zoom call, or focus on eye gaze and facial gestures, but that’s not what we normally do in interactive lectures and workshops. We turn, shift, we change positions, we focus on ergonomics and healthy body mechanics that support what we are sharing and learning.”
Developments in XR
That is why it is so important to design with physicality in mind. “We have to remember that we are still embodied in our environments. If we can design worlds that enhance a sense of wonder and a spirit of possibility, we will live in those worlds and that feeling can also enhance our physical realities. We can teach people digital literacy: how to communicate, how to collaborate and how to be present and available to each other in these new environments.”
Are there any developments in XR she is concerned about? “Many of us might not have been taught how to be curious about our internal emotional landscape, giving context and meaning to feelings, but I think that is changing. More and more people are realising that being human is complex, especially in this accelerated age of AI. There are some elements of daily life that I think it’s important to be conscious about, in terms of choice and agency.For example, we have seen how wearable devices can change our movement practices and can form part of positive habit formations. Yet some people tell me they feel their training sessions don’t count if they aren’t tracked. Are we dependent on machines, or choosing how to couple with them? How can our use of AI-enhanced technology, similarly, encourage flourishing rather than dependency and addiction? I see the example of wearables as a great invitation to ask: do I still have the ability to sense my body’s natural cues? Data can give us insights, but if the insights reinforce our behaviour to such a degree that we don’t have the confidence to act without a device influencing us, it’s time to recalibrate and assess how we’re making healthy choices in our own overall best interest.”
Our conversation veers towards ChatGPT and poetry. Caitlin has a new book of poetry recently released, Digital Satori: “There is a lot of hype over AI, of course. I’m deeply interested in how to encourage the data sets to be as diverse as possible. I see that there could definitely be a negative outcome if we don’t defend the diversity of data sets. We need to talk about the ethics of proper use with developments in AI.”
Will AI overtake facilitation and mediation in XR communities? Will it ever serve to replace humans? “It can help to assist us in different ways – and it’s already helping. I don’t think it will necessarily replace us or fully teach us how to reach each other in a way that replaces authentic human connection. It can’t teach us how to reach into ourselves in a way that embodies the fullness of our humanity. That’s up to us.”