Virtual Reality (VR) is projected to have it’s first billion dollar year in 2016 (Deloitte report) and to become a 35 billion dollar market by 2025 (Goldman Sachs report). Initially much of that market is dominated by hardware and gaming, but serious data analytics applications in healthcare, engineering, earth observation, military applications and education form 12 billion dollars of the projected market in 2025.

Simultaneously, one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry is data science. There is a profound shortage of people who are domain experts, able to program analyses, and understand how to leverage cloud data centres to explore vast amounts of data. One solution to the deluge of data is to train more data scientists. Another solution is to make better tools so as to reduce the technical level of expertise required for domain experts to derive interesting insights from data. Emerging technology such as VR, 3D input devices and Natural Language Processing (NLP) could now provide the platform for a new set of rich interactive tools to allow groups of individuals to collaboratively explore complex data sets in a way that is accessible and approachable to the broader community.

This presentation provides a survey of opportunities and challenges associated of leveraging VR and NLP using case studies from cloud computing dashboards, ocean monitoring systems, and bioinformatics. What interaction mechanisms are most effective at promoting engagement? What are the most seamless ways of elucidating the inter-relationship of disparate data sets? What are the best models for group interactions in a virtual environment? Specifically, the potential impact on user experience relative to common interaction scenarios with current tools will be identified in this presentation.