Best Practices for Building Spatial Solutions — Part 1
Software development practices for spatial solution are growing, we are sharing our experience and best practices for building spatial solutions using eXtended Reality (XR)
Covid19 is forcing us into a ‘new normal’, A new normal that makes most of us work from home, and that leads to spending long hours on Zoom, or other video conferencing platforms. Meetings, inceptions, discovery workshops, conferences, and webinars are happening in the same monotonous ways. We are stuck with a screen in almost the same pose and posture. Some might use their mobile phone or tablet but that limits us to a small screen. We do miss our office days and face to face meetings; the brainstorming, retrospectives, daily stand-ups or other important workshops exercises. Using physical boards, whole office walls and seeing our colleagues and clients body language was so normal pre-covid. Now, even when offices are re-opening, it will be difficult to go back to business as usual, while maintaining the social distancing norms. We have to face it, there is no other option than shaping what the ‘new normal’ means to our ways of working and interactions. We need touchless and contactless experiences that lead to the same results, and great digital products as well as customer experiences.
Can XR help here? XR moving from nicety to necessity.
At ThoughtWorks, we brainstormed on new ways of working that may be more engaging, interesting and productive could look like. One of those experiments is ThoughtArena, where users can collaborate in 3D space. It is an augmented reality-based mobile app, that allows the users to create a space with virtual boards in it.
ThoughtArena allows its users to extend traditional 2D workspaces to real world environments.
Users can place virtual whiteboards in the 3D environment and use them like physical boards. They can place those broadcasts in their comfort and in real-time with other users. In addition, users can add audio and video notes and may vote on the notes.
This article explains our learnings around building spatial applications and also presents the results from the user experience and behavior analysis using the XR applications. We have done a couple of experiments and project deliveries in XR, learnings from them can also be found here.
Best Practices for Product Definition
The XR tech evolution is happening at great speed and there are a number of products being built to meet different business needs. XR based products are still evolving, and there are not enough standards and practices to validate the product maturity. Here are our learnings while defining the product features for ThoughtArena.
Go for Lean Inception
Inception is typically the phase where we define the product and its roadmap, as well as align on the big picture. However, after the initial meetings with stakeholders, we realized the need for a lean inception approach, which gives us a quick start and iteratively discovers the MVP. We planned a few remote meetings with stakeholders from business, marketing and technology groups, and came up with an initial feature list. We betted on Bare Minimum Viable Product (BMVP) features and product vision in the first couple of days.
Evolutionary product definition
We knew that, we have signed up for a product which will evolve with time, and we would need a plan which enables evolution. In ThoughtArena, we have included many new features since inception, and deprioritized others based on user expectation and need.
Recruit a diverse user group
One of enablers for the product evolution is the user group with diverse skills and experience. We have recruited a diverse user group in terms of ethical background as well as professional background including members IT, Operations, Delivery, Experience Design, Marketing and Support, and diversity. The group helped us strengthen product definition and vision. They helped us to think about newer ways of interactions with the 3D boards such as adding multimedia which is typically not available in a physical or digital wallboard.
State the Risky Assumptions
Defining a set of hypotheses for risks and assumptions and then validating them is valuable for a product, especially in an emerging technology space. We stated following risky assumptions for ThoughtArena:
- 3D experiences may be more enjoyable and better than 2D experiences
- Spatial (3D) experiences may improve creativity and productivity
- XR Tech is ready for prime time.
- It may be a remedy for Zoom fatigue.
- XR Products may leave a long lasting impact on the users.
Plan to Validate the Risky Assumptions
Once we know the risky assumptions, we should plan to validate those quantitatively and qualitatively.
- Is the product 3D/Spatial fit?
- Is spatial experience enjoyable?
- Does the product really solve the user’s problem?
Map the user’s mental model of a physical collaboration space
Users should be able to relate the experience of the product to the flexibility and intuitiveness of a physical collaboration space.
Focus on lifecycle and diversity of content (creation, reorganization, consumption)
The tool should assist users in the different stages of content lifecycle : Creation (editing, duplication, look and feel of content), Reorganization (grouping, sorting, moving), and Consumption (updates, viewing real time participation, tagging, commenting etc.). The users should also be allowed to choose from a diverse range of content like freehand drawing, shapes, flowcharts, tables etc.
Understand the user journeys for different use cases and focus on mapping them end to end functional flows. The product should aim to provide more transparency to view and manage collaborators and activity across the spaces and boards.
Adapt the experience to the user’s context
Identify the relevant use cases to allow users to engage using their mobile devices. The tech should be stable to adapt to user’s need to move around or stay stationary without impacting the experience.
Market analysis and coverage
Market analysis of similar products is important to understand what is already there. It also helps prioritize the product features. We analyzed XR collaboration products such as Spatial.io, Big Screen as well as popular products like Jabboard and Mural. This analysis enabled us to prioritize features such as audio, voice to text and video notes, and targeting to Android and iOS/iPadOS — which in turn would help to have more user base coverage.
In the next part, we share the best practices of XR User Experience Design.
> Part 2: XR User Experience Design || Part 3: XR development and testing >
Authors and contributors : Kuldeep Singh, Aileen Pistorius, Sumedha Verma and Team XR Practices at ThoughtWorks.
