Immerse Creator UI/UX Overhaul: Post 2

During today’s UI/UX design meeting, we stepped back a bit and discussed the need to utilize this opportunity to build consistent brand recognition across all of our applications.

This isn’t just about Immerse Creator, it’s about every ‘Immerse Enabled’ application Arch Virtual creates. Whenever anyone opens one of our applications, it should have visual, audio and haptic consistency whether it’s an architectural visualization, a medical simulation, a safety training application, or Immerse Creator.

We also started a meeting notes doc to track these UI/UX design meetings.

We talked about various options for the main menu design, including toolbelts, radial menus. Hotkeys for accessing these menus, where those should be located, etc. We already have a Main Menu system in Immerse, but it’s gaze based and not ideal.

We settled on the menu being accessed by a button press on left controller for both Vive and Oculus.

We talked about the pros and cons of emulating Oculus Dash functionality. Our original UI redesign concept we had sketched some time before they revealed Dash looked almost identical to it. Will it now look like we’re copying them? Would that necessarily be a bad thing? We certainly aren’t going to clone it, but if our UI has some visual overlap or consistency with that concept, what are the pros and cons of that?

Maybe detachable menu panels could have options to ‘tag along’ with you as you move through the space. Maybe it can be detached and become a 2D panel and behave like an interactable asset?

Are we wanting this to be more immersive — grabbing and touching with the hand vs. laser pointers? Maybe somewhere in between? Maybe very subtle laser pointer? Maybe it takes your gaze and laser direction to determine laser activation?

Maybe laser changes color based on menu module activated?

We don’t want visual effects, sound effects, menu animation and haptics to be an afterthought. Let’s bring those designers in early and often before we get too far ahead.

Future roadmap needs a performance meter to manage scene complexity.