History:
As a child of the 80s I grew up with things like Knightmare, a children’s TV show which had brave adventurers navigating virtual dungeons with the help of their friends. Later came Lawnmower Man, based on a short story by Steven King and dealing with similar ideas as War Games before it. Finally, in the early 90s came Cyberzone, another TV show trying to show the promise of virtual reality.
While entertaining for the most part, all of the above sorely highlighted that Virtual Reality just wasn’t ready yet and the ideas around it were still the subject of sci-fi more than the real world. Outside of huge industrial simulators for the Air Force and similar industries it disappeared until relatively recently.
3D cinema releases like Avatar were perhaps the beginning of a resurgence in more immersive entertainment. Technologies like 360 degree cameras and mobile Virtual Reality headsets like the Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR soon followed. These headsets allowed users to experience simple VR experiences using their phones and showed that Virtual Reality was now ready to enter the consumer space again.
In the past few years more advanced headsets like the Playstation VR, HTC Vive and the Oculus Quest. The last is a cable free headset allowing full six degrees of freedom, using cameras on the headset to map the world around the user rather than cameras around the user mapping their location as previous headsets had. This makes VR accessible to almost everyone despite space restraints.
Alongside VR, Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) experiences have also become popular. While VR replaces the world around you for a complete immersion, AR overlays on the real world for experiences like Pokemon Go, Snapchat filters and Ikea Place.
MR on the other hand creates experiences where virtual objects interact with the real world in a realistic way. MR headsets like Hololens are a lot more expensive and the technology still has a way to go but could offer the most potential in business applications.
Discovery
As with any new technology it can be easy to imagine use cases that may seem like a great fit but can very quickly prove to be less than ideal in practice.
I have run a few sessions with design teams where people are trying VR for the first time. When asked what they think will be essential in a VR experience before they try the headset on, many talk about being able to walk around a real room and have that translate to movement in a virtual world. Others mention being able to look in all directions and feel like their reality has been completely replaced. Still more mention being able to interact with everything in the virtual world.
Once they have actually tried the headsets they have a different opinion, although you can build a complete world around the user, it is important to use visual or audio queues to keep them focussed on the next task and as with any design task, it’s important to ask, is this the right media for my message and what is the outcome I want from it.
I strongly encourage everyone who is going to be involved in a VR project to try and understand the opportunities and limitations of the technology before embarking on a project. We then ask them to write goals for what they want the experience they have in mind to deliver to users.
Design the experience
Once there is a concept in mind then much like other design projects you will need to start creating personas, user journeys, wireframes and an interaction model. The key difference is thinking in terms of an immersive experience.
Think about how the user starts the experience, what is the equivalent of your home screen. How do they enter the experience and how do you quickly familiarise them with the world they now inhabit whether it’s a version of the real world or something more fantastical.
Where do they go from here? What do you want them to experience or achieve while in the experience? Map out these journeys and where they can branch and re-join.
Anne Frank House VR
One of the most affecting VR experiences I’ve had to date was Anne Frank House VR , the developers start with a simple UI choice then set the scene with a series of photographs and narration played in front of you, you are then led on a virtual tour of the Anne Frank House with a series of audio and visual cues directing you to the next spot. Combined with excellent voice casting to read the excerpts from Anne Frank’s diary it brings the tragic reality of this time to life in a way no other medium could.
Keep your focus
It can be tempting to create experiences that immerse the user in a busy 360 degree world with limitless possibilities but this will immediately overwhelm the user. You also need to consider that in the real world we have areas of focus.
Anything too close to the user’s face or inhabiting the space where their body is will be extremely uncomfortable. The 20 degrees directly in front should be the area of primary focus with a larger cone of around 70 degrees as a comfortable space.
To the sides you have peripheral vision, it is good practice not to have too much movement in these areas unless you are directing the user to the next part of the experience.
In terms of distance, around 15m from the user’s position is the sweet spot, especially for any UI components the user “clicks” on. For any direct interactions make use of the foreground and highlight that the object can be interacted with. The background should be used for scene setting or allowing the user to see something as it comes towards them so they are prepared for it entering the foreground.
The Oculus Developer guide has some more in-depth reading on this subject.
UI considerations
In VR design, bigger is better. Ensure the UI components are in the user’s direct field of vision, in the sweet spot of around 15m and easy to read. As most users will point and click on buttons ensure that they are large enough that the user doesn’t have to be precise with their aiming to make a choice.
Vader Immortal Menu UI
One thing to consider is whether to use a more web-like floating box of text and buttons or to consider using skeuomorphic design, where the interface looks like part of the world you inhabit. Games like Vader Immortal use this to great effect. In this game the menu is a computer panel from the Star Wars universe and the pointer a gloved hand.
Consider how each approach asks the user to interact with the world and whether it adds to your experience and the goals you are trying to achieve.
Hardware, frameworks and tutorials to get started
I’ve only touched on my initial thoughts on designing for VR based on a range of experiences I’ve tried, some workshops with teams, tutorials I’ve completed and research I’ve conducted. I’m planning to follow up with posts about photography and video in VR using the Insta360 Evo camera and as I develop more experiences, some more in-depth case studies and use cases for VR.
In the meantime, here are some links to the VR hardware I have and some tutorials and guides I’ve found very helpful as I explore this new technology.
Oculus Quest headset: https://www.oculus.com/quest/
The best stand-alone headset and a great, affordable introduction to the world of VR.
The Insta 360 Evo camera: https://www.insta360.com/product/insta360-evo
An amazing consumer level camera which lets you shoot 180 degree 3D photos and videos for VR and at the click of a button 360 degree 2D videos.
UX Guidelines:
The Google Cardboard guidelines, Oculus Best Practices and the UX of VR are all great places to start.
Frameworks:
A-Frame VR is a Web VR framework using custom HTML tags and javascript. While it’s not as powerful as some of the gaming engines it’d perfect for getting started and still capable of very immersive games and experiences. I highly recommend Alvin Wan’s tutorials on creating an endless runner with A-Frame over on Smashing Magazine.
Unity is perfect for more advanced use cases and while the learning curve is steeper, there is still a lot you can do without having to write more than a few lines of code. Their beginner’s guide for VR in Unity is a great place to start.