TL;DR: VR is often considered “headphones for your eyes” and excels at giving users a sense of scale and presence in a virtual world. By using VR as a medium for simulating, testing, and showcasing physical projects, we get the speed of software iteration with some of the experiential benefits of a physical prototype. This means that VR could be the “killer-app” for startups trying to pitch and user test experiences such as wearables or IoT devices before building it.
I’m a maker at heart. I love building everything from time machines to mind-controlled drones. I’m also a software product designer and UX practitioner by trade.
My maker-side wants to dive in and get my hands dirty building circuits and models while my UX side wants to user test and iterate quickly on low fidelity proxies. However, building something like a jet pack would require significant time, effort, labor, and often means enlisting others to help. That’s where Virtual Reality (VR) prototyping could bridge the gap. I know because I built one.
Three reasons you should reach for that VR headset
I was watching Iron Man over 4th of July weekend and realized that Tony Stark actually had it right all along. In the movie, he builds his hardware at superhuman speed with the help of JARVIS, his artificial intelligence supercomputer who takes care of building his simulations. This leaves Stark free to make high-level decisions, change things at will, and ultimately take more risks early before committing to a design.
1. You can user test early and mitigate risk
In the software world, UX and product designers use the same processes as Stark and JARVIS. They quickly prototype and test assumptions using tools such as Photoshop, Sketch, Invision, and Framer and are ultimately able to determine if something is intuitive or even desired by people at all. All of these things help mitigate risk at lower costs than actually engineering it.
The unique aspect with building functional physical models is that getting to a working prototype is pretty difficult and costly— the larger it is, the more effort and troubleshooting is required. However, if you think of VR as both a Star Trek “replicator” and a “holo-deck”, it becomes a great tool to quickly get an actual working prototype in your hands and even test them in simulated environments in hours instead of days or weeks.
2. Iterations so fast, it’s practically free
Software has been wildly successful not only because of its usefulness, but because iteration is fast, and deployment to standardized devices is easy compared to hardware.
While there are great tools for physical prototyping such as 3d printing, Arduino, Particle Photon, Raspberry Pi (to name a few), iterating on simple features like swapping a single-color LED for an multi-colored RGB one or adding sound effects after you’ve started building can be can mean redesigning the prototype from scratch. Prototyping in VR affords you the flexibility to take more risks and make more changes earlier in the process.
With the rise of standardized VR devices and controls, emailing a mockup of an experience for client feedback or even changing things in real-time is now possible. All of a sudden, hardware and experience shops can work remotely at the speed of their software counterparts.
3. Don’t just imagine, see it for yourself
Building something like a real Iron Man suit, a massive art installation, or the next big wearable would take serious investment and a team of smart people to buy into it. Not all of us are multi-billionaire playboys like Stark and need to convince investors. Even if we were rich, aligning a team around a unified vision to build it isn’t easy. Sure, you can show some sketches and renders, but what really sells is the emotion and excitement of trying it yourself.
With VR, you no longer have to get stakeholders to stretch their imagination or leave room for misinterpretation. People can actually live your vision. They can fly like Iron Man, walk through an interactive art piece, or try out your next generation wearable.
With VR, you no longer have to get stakeholders to stretch their imagination or leave room for misinterpretation. People can actually live your vision.
The experiences may be virtual, but the benefits are real
Many people see VR for its potential in gaming, but as a design and prototyping tool VR can be used to quickly mitigate risks by simulating experiences holistically in a cost-effective manner. Whether those risks are ensuring that your project is validated with users, experimenting with several options, or pitching to investors, reaching for the VR headset instead of an Arduino could save you a ton of time and money. The experiences in VR may be virtual, but the learning, excitement, and risk-reduction is real.
Have you ever wasted time building a physical experience or device that could have been validated sooner in VR? Let me know in the comments or reach out to me on twitter! I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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Andre Le is a UX designer based in San Francisco with a background in emerging technologies such as augmented reality, 3d printing, and virtual reality. When he’s not working, he spends his time hacking together time machines, teaching people how to make, or creating games.
Special thanks to Austin McCasland, Jared Lodwick, Jabili Kaza, and Sean Ro for helping with this article.
