Ideas for articles about UX in AR/VR
Last time, Inborn X was growing pretty fast. Thank you to all of you for the support!
Over time, I have collected quite a few ideas for articles; some of them have been in my Trello for over a year. I started to realize that I wouldn’t be able to get through them any time soon. Between publications, interview series, and the new newsletter, I don’t have enough time to work on VR/AR designs. So, I decided to write less and create more. And to make this process less painful for me, I decided to share my ideas for articles. Maybe they will be helpful to someone, or lead to something more interesting. So here you go:
AR Clothes
Face tracking is already here, and it has already changed how we use frontal cameras and, everyone’s favorite, the selfie. Body tracking is almost there. It would be interesting to jump into the future and imagine how we may choose our outfit by searching through digital wardrobes. Imagine how crazy these outfits might be, and what confusion they may cause. Think about how our physical body can degrade.
Architects are the best VR designers
It’s not manipulation. I really believe that it’s true. My architectural background from a long time ago helps me just as much as a full career in interface design. I keep noticing how, during immersive interviews, great designers keep mentioning that experience in architecture is a great bonus. This is because architects already know a lot about ergonomics; they know how to work with 3D space and scale.
VR First
This is an analogy to Mobile First, which was introduced by Luke Wroblewski. Even when he first released his famous book, mobile wasn’t everywhere, but it was in a much better position than VR and AR are in now. It would be interesting to go through each step of how mobile became so important and mirror them to VR until we get a purely VR First concept where designers will think about how their websites will look in 3D and only adapt them to desktop and mobile afterward.
The revolution in VR will happen in design, not hardware
Everyone says that the hardware is not here. Which is absolutely true. Without good enough hardware, it’s impossible to have a consumer-ready product. But this shift can only happen with decent design. When Magic Leap showed a small guy throwing stones, everybody started complaining that it was not a whale and ignored the FOV, which is tiny. This is a great example of how people focused on design when hardware was unnoticed.
Habituation in VR
In real life, we are doing a lot of things automatically. I don’t think about how I brush my teeth. For me, it is clear that if I point a small arrow on the screen of my Macbook on the icon of the trash bin and press the square on the keyboard twice, I’ll open a list of files that were deleted. When I don’t use my mobile for a minute or more, the screen will switch off. For VR, we have our real life habits like grabbing and throwing. Also, we are using approaches that were invented by Xerox in the ’70s like click to open. In the near future, we will have to review our interactions and come up with new ones that will be more adapted to VR.
How to design the VR experience
I know that it’s already a widely explained theme, but I wanted to break it down into three parts.
Part 1. Design of VR in 2D
There are multiple options to design and deliver ideas to developers using only a 2D tool:
- Sketches on pen and paper
- 360 sketches on equirectangular grid
- 360 designs on the easy grid in photoshop
- Export to 360 using Sketch Plugin
- Export from Figma to 360 using VRoom
- Short animations in After Effects
- Design of flat components in any image editing software
- Diagrams and user flows
- Describing interactions through text (it sounds silly, but it’s required as assistance to almost any design)
- Review of wiARframe
Part 2. Design of VR in 3D
I move onto a separate part as the flow and tools are different when compared with designing in VR.
- The difference between different 3D modeling software (Cinema4D/Blender/Maya/3Dmax)
- Game engines such as Unity3D/Unreal
- WebVR and AFrame
- Combining 3D modeling software with camera tracking in After Effects for showing AR (Example)
- Torch
- Import/export and sharing models
Part 3. Design of VR in VR
Advantages and disadvantages of every tool for designing and prototyping in VR.
- Sketchbox
- Tilt brush
- Blocks
- Moment
- Tvori
- Import/export and sharing designs
Data visualisation in VR
I made the first steps by exploring human perception in VR. I wanted to make a few VR visualizations with more values that can successfully contain and explain regular 2D visualization. In theory, if VR is plus one more dimension, this means that in VR one can be shown one grade complicated visualisations as on 2D. It requires a lot of exploration work.
Reviews of tools:
VRroom
Tool for viewing designs made in Figma in 360. I already tested the beta, had a chat about future improvements with Justin Mitchell, and it looks pretty promising.
wiARframe
I tested the beta of this tool for AR prototyping, and Jeremiah has done a great job. Now he is in Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, Powered by Techstars and will release v1.0 soon ;) It’s quite an interesting app that allows you to prototype AR scenes on your desktop and immediately test and share them on mobile.
Torch
They are still in beta. As far as I know, they focused fully on prototyping and designing on mobile. I hope that this week, I’ll receive the beta and test it.
Sketchbox
Comparably mature tool for designing and prototyping VR inside VR. I had a chat with Joe Connoly, and they have a very user-centric approach. I didn’t have a chance to use it for the whole process, but after a few tests, it looks promising. I would even recommend it as a tool for your next VR design.
Moment VR
Another tool for prototyping VR inside of VR. Didn’t have a chance to test. Request beta here.
Tvori
Great tool for animation inside of VR. Billy Vacheva made a nice review how she is using it for VR prototyping. I’m sure that there is more than enough to explore.
Sketching of VR and AR on a paper
Last time, I had a chat with quite a few VR and AR designers and found out that everyone is beginning by drawing on a paper. So, I decided to do a small study and figure out how people are explaining complicated VR/AR concepts such as FOV and controls on hands. Hopefully, it’ll help me to come up with some best practices, guidelines, or templates. Can you share with me some of your sketches of VR? Just a photo of a paper from your table or whiteboard will be more than enough. I’ll not share it with anyone else.
As I already started collection materials for it, I’ll finish it soon.
So, if you want to work on any of those ideas, just let me know, and I’ll add note.
If you have your own idea for an article related to UX in AR/VR that you want to share, drop me a message, and I’ll include it here.
I’ll continue working in Immersive Interviews series. So, If you are a VR/AR designer, and you have what to say drop me a line.
As I’m now switching fully to practical VR/AR design, feel free to contact me if you need any design help or advise. I’ll be glad to help.
