Crafting effective design experiences for the new realities
The new realities (AR, VR & MR) have been there for a while now, and as designers we are certainly excited about designing the experiences for these media. But many of us are confused when it comes to designing the experiences for the same. Most of us would be trying it for the first time. After some research I could collect some pointers that can help designers to have a baseline understanding of the principles to be followed, in order to make the designing experience better.
Let’s start first with understanding what these terminologies mean.
Augmented Reality (AR) — It always takes place in a physical environment where one or more imaginary objects/things are introduced through a device. E.g — Pokemon game. Here you see the real world through your phone camera, but a Pokemon character is introduced which becomes an inseparable part of that environment. The image below shows it better.
Virtual Reality- As the name says, here you enter into a virtual world as soon as you put on the device — like a headgear. You are completely immersed in that environment and become disconnected with the outside world/environment.
Mixed reality — As the name suggests its the combination of above two realities. You need to use a device like hololens to have this experience. It’s an augmented reality incorporated with a headgear to give you out of the world experience.
Now that we have the basic understanding, let’s look at some guidelines to design the experiences for these realities.
- You should have a well defined business objective.
You cannot introduce these media in your designs for fun or just because it’s trending. You should have a solid business objective and good research that supports the use of these media into your design. For example if your audience ranges from teenagers, to housewives, to senior citizens, it’s definitely not a good idea to include AR/VR into your designs. E.g — Using AR or VR for a grocery app is not a good idea. However, you can definitely make use of it in a corporate training program.
YouCam app is a good example. Here you can actually test online how makeup products will look on your face. Buying makeup is typically a leap of faith and buying it online definitely feels risky. YouCam helps you to try on different brands’ products on your face and helps you choose the best one. Great combination of AR technology and market gap, right?
2. Storyboarding
As the name says a storyboard portrays data in graphical form/pictures to give a clear idea of the incident happening in a sequence. When we are going to design objects for a 3D medium it becomes important to have a storyboard in 2D first to understand the nitty-gritty on paper. Creating an immersive experience without a good storyboard will not give effective results.
3. Usage of colour and text
Colour- No matter where in the world you go, the colour theory and its application remains the same! Remember to use colours that set the right context and are well established in the user’s mind. Green for right, red for wrong etc. Checking the contrast ratio of colours and text is most important. Users may use the app for a longer period of time, hence maintaining appropriate colour contrast and good readability of text becomes important.
Text- should always be visible and easy to read for the eyes. Try to avoid serif and curly or fancy fonts to reduce strain on the user’s eye. Try to keep text to a minimum. Usage of 3D text should be limited to title/headings only.
According to the proximity principles, there are 3 areas where we can place our text. UI/Interaction area is where most of the text would come. See the diagram below for more reference. You can read more about text placements here.
4. Focusing on realism
The primary goal to keep in mind, when designing objects for AR and MR, is blending virtual stuff with real. So the objects should appear likewise. They should become an inseparable part of that environment. Flat coloured objects/surfaces will look fake to the user’s eye. Try to use real textures, shadows, reflected lights to give a feel of a real scenario. Lighting should also be appropriate, otherwise it can instantaneously break the immersive experience. A good example of this is below
5. Experience is the king
Ultimately designing an experience which is totally immersive is everything for AR, VR and MR. It can take users to new heights of experience if done right. One small mistake in design can throw the user out of this immersive world. Keep these things in mind and you will be on the journey to design a good immersive experience.
- The strategy should be- Create, Test, Learn and Iterate
- The possibilities with new realities are endless. Do not overwhelm users through heavy interactions. Keep them as simple as you can.
- There should not be a lot of movements or things happening randomly on screen. It can give users motion sickness.
- The best AR and VR effects should add or enhance the pre existing behaviours.
Lastly, we need to remember that its just the beginning of Metaverse as of now. It's going to be there for a long, long period of time and will be a big explorational space for many years. It will blend people’s real and virtual lives in the process. Our generation is at the early stage of this journey, and our experiences are going to impact many coming generations in a bigger way than we think.
So let’s take this as a responsibility on us to create and design better experiences and set up ethical practices that will help the next generations to build upon.
If you loved reading this article, get ready to explore more such interesting insights into new realities from the forward-thinkers, innovators and emerging leaders.
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