Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Who Killed Edward Johnson?
UALR app lets users step in, solve the crime
The body of Edward Johnson, lying in a pool of blood, has been discovered in the bathroom of his apartment during a Super Bowl party. Johnson’s friend, Samuel Marcelle, calls 911.
“Oh my God, he’s dead! There’s blood everywhere, and he’s not moving! Please, someone help!”
Officer Justin Williams has responded to the scene at 124 Rodeo Drive and, with the help of a new webbased app, you can come along for the investigation to interview witnesses, collect evidence and determine if indeed a crime has been committed.
This is the scenario that unfolds in CrimeScene 360, a virtual reality mystery app created in a collaboration between the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology and the George W. Donaghey Emerging Analytics Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. It’s a cloudy Tuesday morning earlier this month and a few of the people behind the app have gathered in a room at the analytics center in the Engineering and Information Technology building at UALR. On a large screen on the wall is the first page of the app that shows Officer Williams in front of a yellow banner resembling police tape and “Crime Scene 360” written in black.
The app started out as a recruitment tool for an October job fair at UALR’s Donaghey Student Center, says Dana Fachner Tyler, a criminal justice graduate student at UALR. She asked her husband, David Tyler, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the school, to come up with a crime scene storyline. He reached out to staff at the analytics center in May about using virtual reality to tell the story — and things took off from there.
“It started to spiral,” Tyler says. “In our first meeting, we were talking through all the different options and things that they are working on here. We started seeing applications well beyond what we had initially been looking for.”
The app made its debut at the October job fair and has been used at other recruitment events, Fachner Tyler says, and now both she and her husband are using it in the classroom.
“I’ve made a number of assignments that use aspects of it in both my ‘Introduction to Policing’ and ‘Introduction to the Criminal Justice System’ courses,” Tyler says.
“In my classes, students are walking through CrimeScene 360 and answering a list of questions at the end,” Fachner Tyler says. “They are reflecting on what the day-to-day life of a police officer might be like, how common this [scenario] might be, whether this fits with the narrative of what police work is. We’re trying to make it a really holistic learning tool in addition to being really fun and flashy.”
The app gives the user a chance to see what it’s like to investigate a crime scene from beginning to end.
“One of the things we really focused on was trying to walk the line of realism as much as we could and give students what a typical 911 call might look like,” Tyler says. Don’t worry, even though this is an investigation of a dead body, the app is firmly rated PG.
The scenario played out comes from notes from a study made by Tyler and informal conversations with former law enforcement officers. The app begins in the squad car of Officer Williams as the user hears the 911 call and sees a
screen with details about the report.
After exiting the car, the app takes the user into the apartment to inspect the scene and interview people there — two of whom are played by the Tylers; the others are played by criminal justice school director Tusty ten Bensel and doctoral student Darlynton Adegor. We see Johnson’s bedroom, messages on his laptop, his prescription for painkillers, what may have been his cup of bourbon and Coke as well as the chalk outline on the bloody floor of the bathroom where his body was found.
Along the way, there are clues as well as a few red herrings for the user to sort through.
At the end, users are asked to fill out a report and decide whether or not poor Edward Johnson was the victim of foul play, an accident or suicide. (A “solution page” that would let users find out just how Johnson met his end is in the works, Tyler says.)
Officer Williams is played by the real-life Justin Williams, a graduate student and student development specialist in the criminal justice school at UALR, who just happens to be a former Arkansas State trooper.
“It’s awesome,” he says of the app. “The call log, what the [interior of the car] looks like, it gives you the perspective of what it’s like to respond to a call.” The analytics center “focuses on research and development in immersive visualization, augmented/ virtual/mixed realities, and interactive technologies in general,” according to the school’s website. Tom Coffin is the center’s operations manager.
“A lot of our focus is doing these cross-disciplinary projects,” he says. “We can do the coding, we can do the artwork, but we are not content specialists. We collaborate with researchers on campus, or in industry and government, to help them develop these applications … the whole point is to teach students how to create these assets.”
The plan, Coffin says, is to create a virtual experience with interesting and appealing interaction.
“The artwork is super important, and the look and feel of the application is our primary concern when we’re developing it.”
Speaking of art, Jason Zak is the analytics center’s lead artist.
“The goal was to put the user in the shoes of an actual officer,” he says. “We wanted to make sure that when we were designing this that we really got that part.”
Tyler says there are other ideas on how to use more virtual reality-style apps for law enforcement. But in the meantime, apps like CrimeScene 360 are becoming popular with users in and out of the classroom.
“I’m just starting my career, and I fully expect to be using these type of tools. It’s really exciting to get in and start working on it now.”