THANT MAUNG DISCOVERS THE METAVERSE AND WINS

KU Leuven's Learning Garage 2023 was all about the metaverse. The participants’ task was to develop a business case in team about 'the internet of the future' and convince a jury of its economic added value. Thant Maung and his two teammates invented an application that immerses users in the consequences of climate change if consumption behaviour does not change dramatically.

Thant is a master's student in Electronics & ICT Engineering Technology at Group T Campus. His country of origin is Myanmar, where he first studied Medicine for a year at the University of Medicine in Yangon. In 2019, he arrived in Leuven. Two years later, he already spent a semester as an Erasmus student at the Politecnico di Torino (Italy), a matter of broadening his international horizons even further. At Group T Campus, he has been making himself useful to his fellow students as a student assistant in the Electronics Lab.

As an ambitious student, Thant wants to get the most out of his studies, that much is clear. No wonder he enrolled in the Learning Garage, an extracurricular and interdisciplinary programme of KU Leuven KICK, Cronos Leuven, and the Agoria Learning Centre, in autumn 2022.

Hype

“The choice of theme was a hit,” Thant believes. “Since Mark Zuckerberg renamed his company Meta, the metaverse has become a real hype. According to supporters of the first hour, the metaverse will allow us to interact and connect with others from any location and at any time. Through avatars and VR glasses, we will be able to slip into the skin of our digital persona and function as an inhabitant of a virtual 3D world. The physical and online worlds will merge”.

As an electronics student, naturally Thant is also fascinated by the technology behind the metaverse. “That builds on various technologies that have emerged over the past few years. Besides the internet, you have augmented and virtual reality, distributed ledger technology and Web3, the next version of the internet but three-dimensional, live and shared.”

Sessions

The Learning Garage consists of four sessions and concludes with a final at which participants unpack their business plan.

Thant Maung

© Julie Feyaerts

“As the Learning Garage aims at a broad student audience, the programme started with an Inspiration Event provided by experts and professional users of the metaverse,” Thant explains. “The first workshop involved brainstorming about what you can do in the metaverse. To this end, you were divided into small teams of students from different fields. For example, my team consisted of an economist and an astrophysicist. After intense discussions, we agreed on a theme: climate change and its consequences. How can we use the metaverse to convince the public to change their consumption behaviour?”

Concept

The second session consisted of a Business Model Canvas workshop and an On-the-cover exercise. “We learned how to turn an original idea into a realistic business case. There was also a focus on graphic design,” Thant says.

“Based on this input, we produced the following concept: in the metaverse we point out the impact of meat consumption and the use of respective fossil fuels, energy, and plastics on the following indicators: CO2 emissions, sea level, global temperature, biodiversity and quality of life in general. Suppose Belgians eat 50% less meat, what would be the impact on each of the parameters mentioned? The application we have in mind is data driven. It uses the latest scientific insights and figures.”

The next step was to turn this idea into a business case. “That was the subject of the third session,” Thant continued. “We were also given the necessary tips and tricks to make a powerful pitch of our case with a view to the finals.”

Product

The business case may have succeeded and been rewarded with the first prize, still there is a long way to go before the application will be seen in the metaverse. “You have to take into account an investment of 60,000 euros to translate the concept into an attractive product,” Thant estimates. “That is a considerable amount but if in this way you make consumption behaviour more sustainable, the investment is quickly recouped. The costs generated by climate change are a multiple of this”. Thant is not only proud of his victory, but he is also very elated about what the Learning Garage has taught him. “It was an excellent exercise in social and communication skills. I was the only engineer in a multidisciplinary team to develop a business case on a super topical issue using a technology that will soon dramatically change the way we live and work together.”

Yves Persoons

www.lrd.kuleuven.be