Designing for VRPart 1: Environments

JUST A/VR SHOW

Virtual & Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality: Replacing a user’s physical world with a computer-generated one

Example: Oculus Rift

Augmented / Mixed Reality: Enhancing the physical world with digital objects

Example: Microsoft HoloLens

Virtual Reality Today

Designing Great Experiences

Environment Building

Human Comfort

Technical Design

Sense of Self

Environment Building

IMMERSION & EXPLORATION

ATTENTION

Immersion & Exploration

User is immediately a part of the environment you’ve built

Small details matter

360 degree content is expected

Users will want to try their own ideas

Great VR experiences react the way a user expects, even if it isn’t part of the designed flow

Even small places can be open for exploration

Scale makes a huge impact on presence

Attention

Users have freedom to look anywhere, so capturing and guiding attention is important

Audio and visual cues can help nudge users in the right way

Forced Attention = BAD EXPERIENCE

Human Experience & Comfort

PHYSICAL COMFORT

USER ADAPTATION

Physical Comfort

Don’t Make the Player Sick!

Physical Comfort

Responsible for orienting ourselves in the world… and motion sickness

Motion sickness occurs when sensory system inputs are not consistent

Probably the number one concern in VR experiences

The Proprioceptive System

User Adaptation

Physical differences apply strongly to how someone experiences something in VR

Height

IPD

Gender

Respect player settings for things like camera placement

Design environments for a variety of users

Technical Design

DEPTH

HUDS

ANCHOR OBJECTS

COLORS

TEXT

SCREENS

Depth

Eye focus changes rapidly with distance of objects

Avoid forcing focus changes too frequently between items at different visual depths

Don’t build objects in too closely to the camera placements

HUDS

“Heads Up Displays”

Frequently used in video games

UI elements anchored to the player’s head / camera

Not impossible, but problematic in VR

Difficult to keep at a comfortable distance

Lots of head movement = lots of floating objects

No clear parallel to a physical-world experience for most

Anchor Objects

Specific point of reference that the user can orient to

Stays static in the scene

Helps prevent motion sickness

Example: Cockpits

Example: Virtual nose

Colors

Shadows and lighting may change the way color appears on dynamic objects and make things harder to read

Higher contrast helps make objects stand out from one another, but viewing angle may change dramatically depending on the user’s position

Green is the easiest color to read

Text

Avoid large amounts of text to instruct or inform users of information within a virtual environment

Consider how you will draw attention to text within your environment to capture the user’s attention

Screens

Curved screens work better than a single panel

Translucency or transparency can help keep your environment cohesive

Use sparingly – avoid overwhelming the user with too many menus

Sense of Self FORCED BEHAVIORS

VIRTUAL BODIES

Forced Behaviors

Moving a player involuntarily:

Breaks presence

Loses autonomy

Causes motion sickness

Stay as close to 1:1 as possible

Don’t force it!

Virtual Bodies

No body > wrong body

If users can see it, they expect to act the way their physical self would

Our brain is surprisingly good at filling in the empty spaces

Example

Problem: Hands can be tracked easily, but forearms are harder

Solution: Draw virtual hands, but leave forearms excluded

Part 2: Input

Stay Tuned!