The Laws of Simplicity Applied to VR
2. Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
Just when we mastered organization in 2D, virtual interfaces introduced whole new ways to group, prioritize, and progressively disclose content.
Above the fold. If you were a web designer in the early days of the internet this expression makes you cringe. It was commonly used to describe the area on a web page that appeared before scrolling — and because most people at that time didn’t realize they could scroll down, every important information or interaction had to be crammed at the top. Cut to twenty years later and not only have we learned to take advantage of the scroll, but we have established many design standards to elegantly organize and prioritize content within a limited-sized screen. Hamburger menus, long presses, right clicks, hover states are just a few examples of how we learn to make “a system of many appear fewer”.
While some of these standards will likely carry over and adapt, virtual interfaces will introduce new ways to organize and simplify. In VR, we are no longer limited by 2D constraints such as screen size or a single layer in space, and have multiple new kinds of inputs. This means more ways to group, prioritize, and progressive disclose information. Just like we learned to better organize content on a 2D screen, in VR we’ll learn to make better use of the entire 3D space.
Zoning
There are many lessons to be learned from physical spatial interfaces like an airplane cockpit design or a car dashboard. One of them is to organize and prioritize content in z-depth zones relative to the user. Frequently used functions should be closer and potentially anchored to the user, while less frequent controls can be minimized further away, and yet easily accessible.
Anchoring
Not all content has to be constantly displayed within the user’s field of view. Information can be distributed contextually by anchoring it to places, objects, or avatars where they are more likely to be relevant. This is particularly important to AR and MR where content should be enhancing real life experience — not getting in the way.
Gazing
One of the magic tricks of MR is knowing where the user is looking at — either by tracking their head movement or their eyes. This opens new possibilities for progressively disclosing content, specially when combined with the user’s proximity. Looking at an object from a distance can give you high-level information, while leaning in to it can give you more details.
We are just scratching the surface of this new medium, but it is clear that new MR-native design standards are emerging, taking advantage of the technology to better organize content and make life in the virtual world much simpler.
The Laws of Simplicity Applied to VR
Introduction: Inspired by John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity.
- Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
- Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
- Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
- Learn: Knowledge makes everything simple.
- Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
- Context: What lies on the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
- Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
- Trust: In simplicity we trust.
- Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
- The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
