Goodbye Metaphors, Hello World— Interface Design in Virtual Reality

As designers, the interface metaphors that inhabit our 2D design practices will need to be re-evaluated and oftentimes replaced entirely when designing for virtual reality.

Let’s talk about metaphors, and what VR means for them (spoiler alert: for the most part, they’re fucked).

What?

Yup.

Interface metaphors that we hold sacred like cursors, folders, and files, all stand on shakier ground in the face of VR. Here is a small selection of some juicy design metaphors which deserve revisiting:

• Desktops
• Recycling bins
• Photo Albums
• Buttons
• Sliders
• ‘Minimize’, ‘Maximize’, ‘Close’

Your computer in real life.

…you get the idea. The list could go on for miles.

Having legitimate cause to re-examine GUI staples is exciting for the field of UI design generally, and especially so for individual designers looking to adventure into the unexplored design spaces of virtual reality.

VR gives designers the opportunity to ditch certain metaphors altogether and create better interactions that leverage our user’s real world expectations.

Cool… but I’m still not really certain what you mean.

Let me show you.

If I want to move an object in 3D space using a traditional 2D interface, it looks something like this:

Moving a box in Unity with traditional 2D UI affordances.

However, in virtual reality, moving an object in 3D space should look like this:

This is what intuitive UI design in VR looks like.

The traditional notion of ‘UI design’ expands in virtual reality, and oftentimes the best interface for a task is simply a user’s hands.

The ‘metaphors’ in VR are much more robust, because they aren’t really metaphors in the first place. When a user is in VR they are LITERALLY grabbing something. LITERALLY moving it. LITERALLY placing it somewhere.

Okay. Makes sense, but I’m a UI designer and if you think that VR means no GUIs then...- Stop! I’M NOT DONE YET!

Though it is true that some metaphors just don’t make sense in a VR experience, that doesn’t mean all interaction design should revert back to ‘how would someone literally do it in real life’.

There are many cases where our digital interactions are — straight up — better than real life ones. For example, if you ask people to go back to LITERALLY copy and pasting you may receive some resistance.

If you revert completely to physical interfaces, your users may respond negatively.

The fun and challenging part of our job as designers in VR is to understand where the real world trumps the virtual, and where the virtual one can intersect it in awesome ways. Currently, there is an opportunity to create entirely new interaction and UI paradigms that could be adopted industry-wide.

I see the light, I am converted. Can you give me three tips for breaking away from traditional UI metaphors in VR?

I thought you’d never ask.

1. Get off your computer
   As a VR designer, your everyday processes should leverage non-digital experiences to understand what ‘feels’ good — your learning should be leaving your laptop. It’s often way faster to iterate with real world props than digital ones. Will an interaction in VR feel good? Why not try it out in the real world first!
2. Pay closer attention to your surroundings
   A good designer in VR is a sculptor, an inventor, and a mashup artist! Everything you’ve discovered since you were a child about the way the world works now applies to the worlds you will be designing. Keep those physical experiences in mind when you dive into your virtual ones.
3. Question the GUI, every time
   When you think about creating a flat interface in a virtual space, critically evaluate if you are simply using an existing UI metaphor as a crutch. If there is something new and potentially more intuitive you could accomplish with this new medium, then give it a shot! You might just be the creator of the next cursor, folder, or photo album in VR.

The best part of all this? The technology is already here, the users are emerging, and you can start designing today, for free. The VRenaissance of Design is just starting, so hop on board and get ready for the ride — it’s gunna be a fun one.

Goodbye metaphors, hello world!

I’m Austin. I work as a VR user experience designer. I am having a blast exploring virtual reality from the design perspective, and I’m excited to share what I’m finding.

Check out some of my work.

Stay tuned for more.