360/VR/AR: Speech recognition required
Earlier this year, I was teaching a workshop on immersive storytelling at George Washington University. I was excited to meet with the faculty at the School of Media & Public Affairs and to help infuse some 360 video and VR possibilities into the curriculum.
At the beginning of the workshop, I handed out 10 Google Cardboard headsets and put up a slide with instructions to queue the 360 playlist on the YouTube app.
In previous workshops, I had just shown the examples over a projector and awkwardly clicked and dragged through each scene. This time, I wanted my own Mark Zuckerberg moment standing in a room filled with headset-wielding immersive followers.
Instead, I got 30 minutes of setup time for an exercise I expected to take less than five.
This isn’t because the faculty at GW are not capable of setting up a Google Cardboard. In fact, some had their own to bring and all had experience using headsets.
A sad eight-step process
Showing a Cardboard example in a group is like conducting an orchestra of bad UX.
- Step 1: Pass out Google Cardboards.
- Step 2: Ask everyone to click the link to the YouTube playlist.
- Step 3: Awkwardly show how you have to scroll up on iPhone’s Safari to “Open YouTube App.”
- Step 4: Hit pause quickly so you don’t miss the first example.
- Step 5: Show attendees how to click the little goggle icon to access the split-view Google Cardboard player.
- Step 6: Hit play and quickly get the iPhone into the Google Cardboard (I know, most Cardboards have a button, but let’s be honest, it works quite infrequently).
- Step 7: Ask attendees to pause at the end of example one for discussion.
- Step 8: Repeat for examples two, three, four and five.
Now, I know there are better ways to get a group of 10 set up on headset viewing, but considering that almost every public exhibit of 360 video requires full-time assistants, I know I am not alone.
This process is expected to improve as Oculus, Vive and Lenovo are all planning on offering standalone headsets in 2018. Yet I imagine, while a few of these steps will be cut out, there needs to be a better way to get to our content.
Drowning out the noise
Putting on a headset has distinct advantages over experiencing content on a smartphone, tablet or larger screen. First, it blocks out all distractions. This is fantastic for losing yourself in a story. This is terrible for trying to start a new story or trying to navigate awkwardly with some buttons mounted to your face.
Controllers are making this a little easier, but if we want our content to be seen by millions, the headset experience has to be simpler.
While we can mock the mistakes of Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, it is essential that we work to make speech recognition an integral part of the 360, VR and AR experience.
I am hopeful that in the future my workshops will go a little something like this:
- Step 1: Put on a standalone headset.
- Step 2: “Play the first video in Boundless’ 360 video workshop playlist.”
- Step 3: Discuss, analyze and learn.
In the end, this year’s workshop was a success, and GW has now built 360 video planning, production and distribution into multiple courses.
What we need next
The current state of 360 distribution is not an easy one if you want a large audience to experience your work. In most cases, it involves watching a project on Facebook and moving your phone around the DC Metro like an AT&T customer trying to get service.
Large-scale efforts like The New York Times announcing the launch of its VR app by shipping 1 million Google Cardboards are a start.
But as we evolve with more comfortable and less cumbersome headset displays, we must think about how we can build a better system in both finding our projects and interacting with elements using voice within our stories.
Now . . . time to go visit the computer science department with a list of requests.
