Gravity Sketch — Virtual Reality User Experience Breakdown

This story is part of a series where I break down the onboarding and overall user experience of Virtual Reality games and experiences. I do this primarily for fun, but also because I want designers and developers to build truly immersive experiences, and I hope these breakdowns help.

I use my fundamental design questions / rubric to break down these experiences, and then give a rating on their overall Immersion. I play everything on my Oculus Quest.

Today is Gravity Sketch! One of the first things that I wanted to do in virtual reality was create 3D models. It’s so intuitive and all 3D modeling and game creation will happen in Virtual Reality on day.

Developer tools will become so accessible that everyone will be a creator. Gravity Sketch (along with others like Google Blocks) are among the creator tools that abstract almost all of the complexity of 3D modeling and turn you into Tony Stark.

Here is the written breakdown along with the video.

Visuals: 3/10

1. There are basically 0 visuals except for whatever you create. The world is an open, small grid empty universe waiting for your creations.
2. There is a selection of about 3 different “backgrounds” that you can use for your workspace, but they’re pretty bland imo.
3. It would be fantastic to “get into the mindset” of the objects you’re creating with backgrounds that reflect the environment: Intergalactic, Sahara desert, Arctic tundra, City scape, etc… It’s a very small feature that would dramatically enhance the immersion of the creator space.
4. When building models, there is almost 0 shadows on the objects, so it’s very difficult at time to determine where objects are in 3D space. While I know that is a computationally difficult task, it needs to be fixed, because it really makes modeling difficult.

While I understand that idea behind an “empty” world, it really takes away from the immersion.

The reason this still gets a 3 in terms of visuals is because it is a creator tool and the focus is not on the visuals, and even with that, the options that were available for visuals were at least possible.

Relativity / Proximity: 10/10

1. Everything I need to use is exactly at my fingertips, or at most within my arm space. This is exactly what I want.
2. I don’t need to be standing or walk to move around the space to see the object I’m making (though it does make the experience that much more fun).
3. I can walk around the space as much as I can in the real world which allows me to work on multiple items at the same time.

When I’m working in a new space or environment, as a user, I want to know where my “tools” are either from directly experiencing or from context (i.e. a utility belt on my hips). And thankfully, Gravity Sketch says loud and clear: “Everything is at your fingertips”.

Sizing / Proportions: 9/10

1. All of the text, images, and objects feel properly sized.
2. The tooltip text could be a bit farther away from the camera because there are times where I have to pull my head back in order to read the text.
3. The biggest downside when growing or shrinking items is that I have no physical measurement device to “calibrate” the object. While I do see a 100%, 34%, or 250% indicator of relative size, I don’t quite know what the base units are and that does make it difficult to adjust items.
4. Additionally, when using the edit tool and moving / editing individual points on the object, it becomes increasingly difficult to grab points because of their very small size, so you do have to grow, edit, then shrink back down to edit smaller objects. This does seem slightly unavoidable though.
5. The absolute best aspect is the ability to grow and shrink the scene and individual objects as naturally as Tony Stark. Exactly what I want from my 3D modeling experience.

Aside from the ambiguous dimensions when adjusting sizing, almost everything is the right size and proportional to me as the user: Fonts are the right size from my face, the menus float out at the right distance and are sized properly, and the control that I have over the size of the objects and space is fantastic.

Signals / Cues: 8/10

1. The only obvious cues are the haptic feedback mechanisms when hovering over items in the menu. This doesn’t really do anything aside from enhance the immersion and let me know as the user that I’m “in the right spot” when I’m over the menu.
2. The grip also changes colors and signals when you’re “grabbing” the right object in 3D space. This is critical just because the perspective can make it difficult to see the place that I’m attempting to “grab”

Suggestions:

1. If the user hovered over the menu item long enough, a small gif could have popped up showing what the menu item did.
2. The tool tips could have hovered over the menu only for the simple reason to give the tooltip more space and allow for further explanation of what the tooltip did.

Overall the cues that were given were good and very well placed. The cues that were in the application where exactly what I needed to move forward and use the application constantly. There could have been some audio cues included like a voice over outside of just the video tutorials. There could have been some further explanation of the features. Because there could have been a few more elements of signaling Signals / Cues get’s docked 2.

Onboarding: 6/10

1. There are a handful of visual cues that direct you on how to use the controllers, but if you want to learn how to use the tools that are available, you have to watch the tutorials.
2. This is more or less understandable because this is a fairly complex tool and to have a mini onboarding for each tool would be a little much. There is A LOT to be said about letting the user “discover” what each tool does on their own.
3. The tooltips are really handy which helps support the onboarding process and lets me choose which tool I want to use. The downside is that some tools don’t have tooltips, or I have no idea what “<something means>”

Some suggestions:

1. For the basic actions or even getting the user acquainted with the controls and location of menu options, simply highlighting the menu option asking the user to click it and then providing a video or simple demo would have worked.
2. If you were to take it a step further, identifying the top 4–5 actions (like strokes, volumes, grouping objects, editing, and possibly exporting) and then doing a “real life” walk-through where you create an object in 3D following a pattern and then exporting it would be next level onboarding.

The reason for a 6 out of 10 is because you have to watch tutorials for pretty much everything, but again, at least there are tutorials to educate you on how to perform actions, and it’s a 6 because at least it’s videos and not just documents.

Menus: 10/10

1. This is one of the few experiences where I can say that flat menus get a pass. I cannot think of another way to accomplish the accessibility of the menus and simultaneously remove the “flat” aspect of the menu.
2. All the menus are small, concise and easily accessible. I really appreciated how each tool has it’s own menu, but each menu has no more than about a bakers dozen options to choose from. That lets me learn each tool quickly and thoroughly.
3. I also LOVE the fact that the menus can be detached and placed anywhere in the world. Excellent use of menus and space.
4. This can go for all HUDs (Head’s Up Displays). Making the HUD moveable to a location the user chooses is a very small touch of customization that gives the user a feeling of control and ownership in the workspace.
5. There is also some type of proximity field around the menu that transitions my right hand tool to become a pointer when I’m near the menu, which is a very simple, yet useful indicator of “interactivity”.

The only negative with the menu system is the flatness of a lot of the menus, but I can’t even detract because of that. At the time of this writing, they are working on some tools that are “physical” tools you can use, but they’re still in beta. Otherwise, Gravity Sketch figured out how to do menus in VR REALLY WELL.

Environment: 3 / 10

1. The environment is entirely empty.
2. There are a few workspace options (3 at the moment), and they are all pretty bland.

Some suggestions:

The environment that I’m working in makes / breaks the immersion of the experience. If I’m designing a car, I’d love to be a real warehouse. Even a 3D image of a warehouse would have been better just the empty grey space. If I’m working on building a cactus, I wish I could change the environment to a desert.

Physics: 10/10

1. This tool perfected space manipulation. You can rotate, shrink, and grow all of the objects in the space, and adjust many of the settings regarding the dynamics of those manipulations.

Locomotion : N/A

1. There was no locomotion except for real life motions. As a creator tool, there is no locomotion necessary… or for that matter recommended. At the present moment, I can’t think of a reason or need to have locomotion in for a professional creator tool.

Audio / Sounds: N/A

1. There was literally no audio.

Suggestions:

As a creator tool, I understand that there would be no audio needed just like Excel or Adobe Photoshop doesn’t have music built into it. However… there could have been music added based on the environments that could have been turned on / off.

Controls: 9/10

1. As I mentioned in the relativity section, the controls were entirely within my own hands.
2. After the first use, the controls were very intuitive and repeatable. I was able to reproduce all of them.
3. The combination of the controls and menu’s were fantastic.
4. There were some controls that could have been improved. The color wheel could have been a “freeze” selection so that you wouldn’t have to hold the control down and try to select the color at the same time. The undo functions (via the joystick or undo button) doesn’t undo the way that the user would imagine the undo action.

Some suggestions:

The only alternative could have been to make the tools “physical” tools that are used for the actions that are going to be used. i.e. a tool for volumes, strokes, sheets, etc… They are currently testing that out with some of the sub-d tools, but they’re currently in beta.

Overall the controls are fantastic and some of the best in class for a 3D modeling tool.

Exploration: 3/10

1. There wasn’t much exploration to be done expect for the the features and other menu options. Along with the onboarding, there wasn’t a lot of
2. The entire world is basically wherever you want it to be, and there isn’t anything to “discover”.

Some suggestions:

Because there are so many feature, there could be a “you haven’t used this feature before” recommendation.

Ultimately “Exploration” for a creator tool is different than for a game or experience. In this case, I’m thinking about exploration as:

• “How do I learn about the tools I’m using?”
• “If I know a little bit, how do I learn more about the tools I’m using?”

This leads to things like community driven showcasing, tutorial videos for whole creative projects, highlighting new features in the application (like for Sub-D, which they haven’t done a very good job of),

Immersion Score

Gravity Sketch is a fantastic creator tool and in my opinion should be a template for future editing / creator tool applications at the moment.

Gravity Sketch excels with the fantastic use of menus, excellent proportions and sizing, and intuitive controls that make getting started and sticking with 3D modeling is not only easy, it’s appealing. However, with the almost non-existent environment, lack of onboarding, and lack of audio I have to detract a few points.

Given that, the total immersion score for Gravity Sketch is 7/10. Gravity Sketch is a fantastic 3D modeling tool and it makes 3D so so easy and fun to use!

If you’re looking to build a Virtual Reality experience or have already started on building one, let me know if you’d like me to review your application and help out!

You can also checkout my website bazemore.me for more about me!