Why Moment Hosted a VR Event, Even Though We Haven’t Designed Anything For VR (Yet)
TL;DR: We’re curious.
Exploring new technology and how it has the potential to change lives is part of what we do at Moment. In fact, it’s something we’ve been doing since 2002.
With all of the attention VR has been getting lately and all the VR platforms — HoloLens, Oculus Rift, Vive, Gear, and Cardboard — becoming even more accessible, it’s clearly time to better understand and see where VR could go. For those reasons, Moment hosted The Future Reality: Designing for VR Platforms as part of Internet Week.
Though we haven’t necessarily designed anything for a VR platform just yet, it’s a subject that many of our designers are thinking about almost on a daily basis. As its VR’s appeal starts to spike and with mass consumption on the horizon, designers need to be prepared for what that world might look like. Just as we’ve explored Google Glass, the future of media, and what the future of car sharing might look like, Moment designers are preparing to design for brand new VR platforms.
To help explore what it means to design for VR, we kept things in the family so to speak by bringing together a panel that included a longtime Moment friend and client, Krys Krycinski, the Head of Product for SI.com, GOLF.com, and SIkids.com; a former Moment employee, Alan Pan, who is now a Senior UX Designer at YouVisit; and one of Moment’s current Managing Directors, Alexa Curtis.
Each panelist talked about a specific aspect of VR and how it relates to their world. Alan Pan spoke more about the challenges that come along with being a UX designer, especially when you have to think about how a VR user can look and move anywhere within the experience. Krys Krycinski, who recently worked on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit VR experience, touched on how Sports Illustrated utilized VR to continue to innovate a long-standing franchise like SI Swimsuit. Providing some historical context, a ton of awesome videos of people using the Vive for the first time, and examples of different user interfaces within VR experiences, Alexa Curtis helped attendees think about where we’re at with VR right now and what our experiences could look like down the line.
What Could the Future Bring?
Through this panel discussion, we set out to create a dialogue around VR and to think about how we can contribute to design in VR. Along those lines, some important questions surfaced from the audience that I hope the experts — who are way better suited than I am — will continue to answer in the coming days, months, and years:
- How do you design for VR and get creative feedback as you iterate, especially because it’s difficult to get the person giving feedback to look at the specific thing you want them to?
- How can you prevent motion sickness (and distress) in VR?
- How can we utilize sound to give cues in a VR experience?
- How can you direct a user to a certain menu item or to look at a specific video within a VR experience?
- What will the passive VR experience be like?
Personally, I know very little about VR and found it particularly interesting how inquisitive and enthusiastic the audience was about VR. As with any new technology, early adopters are usually the biggest advocates, but with VR it seems like people aren’t just excited about the tech itself, instead they’re also optimistic about what it could help us do and how it could shape the future.
Could VR be a tool for physical therapy? A new way to watch movies? A kick-ass video game system? A tool for architects and interior designers? The next major learning tool to permeate school systems?
Much the same way the mobile phone went from a utility to a device embedded in our daily lives, could the VR device move from a cool gaming platform to something that could help us do our jobs better?
These are all questions we’ve been asking at Moment, we hope to help answer them someday.
Full disclosure: As I stated before, my own experience with VR is severely limited. After reading the recent New Yorker article about VR and filmmaking, I got pretty excited about putting a VR panel together, even though I had never experienced any VR outside of some 360º videos on Facebook. As a result, I’d like to thank Milica Zec for inviting me to view Giant at NEW INC—my first VR experience—even though she wasn’t able to be part of the panel. You should try to see it when they do a screening near you.
Thanks to Alexa Curtis for her artwork from the HTC Vive at the top and slides from her presentation (not to mention her unwavering enthusiasm when it comes to VR) and to Rodrigo Miguel for his illustration.
