Imagine you decide to pursue your dream of becoming a visual artist. You sign up for a drawing class and you’re excited to learn, but you don’t know where to start. What if there was a VR-based training system to guide you through a series of exercises that gradually helped you build skills and enhance your observational skills. Aayushi Rajput, a graduate of the CS Master’s Program and current Computing PhD student, is working to make your dream of being an artist a reality.
Tell us about your recent research project?
My research focuses on the intersection of virtual reality and arts education. I am developing a VR-based training system designed to help people learn to draw by enhancing their observational skills. This system encourages users to focus on aspects such as edges, proportions, and depth – elements that are often overlooked in everyday observation. The system guides learners through a series of immersive exercises that gradually build these skills. The goal is to make drawing feel accessible, showing that it is not just a talent for the few, but a skill that anyone can learn with the right practice.
I recently traveled to Daegu, South Korea, to present my research at the 33rd IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR), one of the leading venues for virtual reality research worldwide. I presented my work, titled “Advancing Perceptual Training in Arts Education through Immersive Extended Reality Systems,” both at the KELVAR workshop and as a research poster at the main conference. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with researchers from around the globe and to see how my project resonated within the broader VR research community.
“The goal is to make drawing feel accessible, showing that it is not just a talent for the few, but a skill that anyone can learn with the right practice.”
Aayushi Rajput
What successes and challenges have you faces in your research so far?
A significant milestone for the project has been its development from an initial concept into a functional system that learners can actively engage with. Additionally, having the project recognized by the research community through publication has been crucial. Presenting this work at an international conference has allowed me to situate the project within a broader scholarly conversation, and the feedback from these discussions has been invaluable.
The challenges have largely arisen from the interdisciplinary nature of the work. The project integrates art, education, perception, and immersive technology, with each field contributing its own questions, methods, and standards. A significant part of my work has involved facilitating conversations among these disciplines. While this is demanding, it is also what makes the project rewarding; the insights that emerge are richer than what any single discipline could produce on its own.
What aspect of this project are you most excited about?
What excites me most about this project is the chance to challenge the idea that drawing is a talent one is born with. Research shows that drawing is a skill anyone can learn. If virtual reality (VR) can help people see it this way, it could change how we teach observational skills. I enjoy working on a project that blends art, perception, and technology to make creative practices more accessible to everyone.
“Many young people leave art classes believing they lack the necessary talent, but if the system can demonstrate that drawing is a skill they can genuinely develop, it could boost their confidence and encourage them to remain engaged with the arts.”
Aayushi Rajput
Where do you see this research headed in the future?
Looking ahead, I would love to see this work reach high school students. Many young people leave art classes believing they lack the necessary talent, but if the system can demonstrate that drawing is a skill they can genuinely develop, it could boost their confidence and encourage them to remain engaged with the arts. I am also curious about how this training system might support other fields that require careful observation, such as design education, medical illustration, surgery, and aviation, where trained visual attention is critical. My broader hope is that this research will help establish perception as something that can be deliberately and accessibly taught, thus opening the door to trained attention for a wider range of learners and disciplines than it has traditionally reached.