A Memorable VR Experience
Since I’m new to VR, I don’t yet have a favorite VR experience, but I do have a memorable one. When trying out Discovery VR / iOS I realized how much more VR storytelling can offer compared to the more traditional ways of conveying information. Discovery VR offers science news and informative experiences in an immersive medium.
I watched the content in Google Cardboard. I went through these videos, among others: Protecting Pandas, A Nissan Rogue 360 VR Experience, Oh The Huge Manatees, Discovery Science Skydive.
What I liked about the experience is that all of the content was at the same time informative, engaging and gave me a new perspective to storytelling, since everything happened in a 360 environment. 360 gave the storytellers more flexibility in terms of how to tell the story and what the experience is.
What I especially liked:
- very clear landing screen
- engaging stories with engaging music, which I find super important
- less is more, which worked. There are 3 main screens: 1) the landing screen is the main screen with the video content 2) a list of videos is also available in a separate screen if one wants to see the videos as a list of content. Here the videos are under certain categories 3) the info section, where Discovery is asking for feedback so that they can improve the experience and content
- both mono mode and VR mode available
- I did not feel motion sickness
What I didn’t like:
- the content to be story-driven instead of user-driven. So here the user follows a ready-made story arc and narrative order of things, whereas when the user can navigate and click on things, the user can have a bit more interactive story experience
- some of the appearing info cards were hard to read because of the way they were positioned on the screen, e.g. some of them were not well positioned and I had to rotate a bit too much to read them. Also, some of the cards were not available on the screen long enough, so there was not enough time to read all.
- the switch between mono mode and VR mode / Google cardboard mode could have been a lot more intuitive, especially for first time cardboard users this might be difficult
- there was no navigation system at least in the content I watched, so the user can’t advance or move around in the environment through waypoints for instance. This makes the VR experience much more passive than it would be with navigation or some sort of interactivity triggering.
- when the video ends in the VR mode, it’s on repeat, so the video will just start all over again. Instead there could be a smooth transition to the next video/ content or a clear call to action
