Let's look at these two scenarios for a minute: Adam starts his project. He has a great idea. He starts by diving into Unity or Unreal. He grabs some pre-built geometry. He starts testing his prototype; and he asks a colleague to check it out. That's a pretty general approach to creating VR worlds. I want you to think instead of this scenario: so, Peter starts his VR project.
He starts with a great idea. Then he starts by interviewing users and getting ideas from their problem space, from their real-life experience. After looking at his data, he creates personas and story art, mapping out all the emotions the users will encounter. Next, he grabs some strings, some tape and paper and starts mocking up affordances for his experience. Then he starts testing his prototype and asks three to five users he interviewed to play with his concept.
He refines the prototype and asks them to keep providing feedback throughout. That's the *new flow* that will yield you much better results. And that brings together the difference between what you may have started with before you took this class and where we are now. So, let me give you a *visual checklist*. Let's start out with as we begin to design. So, we did a little user research; we brought in
some real-world ideas, and now we're sitting down, ready to design. So, the first thing is *scene approach*. It's that first 30 seconds that are crucial. Remember *presence* – feeling like you're there – and *immersion*, deepening in. So, that's the goal, that first 30 seconds – that's really what you want to do. In a movie, you get like 15-20 minutes, but hey, it's VR. So, we think of it, that *affordance canvas*.
So, think of the affordances that you'll provide, the hints and tips that you may have around those. Think of the *point of view* that the user has to take. Will you give them first person or third person? Will you change that in order to change your story beat, your story flow – the emotion? Speaking of story beat and flow, remember that *story arc* – you know – where you start out introducing the scene, there's some conflict, there's some tension, and then there's the resolution.
Think of playing with that as you develop a story flow, as the user goes through and as you develop a story beat, those kind of actions and reactions – the way that the story responds to the user. And finally there's the *menus*, so the menus, dialogues: are they going to be body-locked? Like, where the user can pull them out? Or is it going to be world-locked where the menus are out in the world?
*Interactive visualizations* might go in this too where you've got a visualization, maybe you adjust it, turn it up, turn it down, reshuffle the data – whatever the case may be. Think about those *emotions, sound and movement* – ESM. So, the role of emotions and sound, and they build on each other. The sound can give you emotion, and movement, and movement can give you emotion as well. *Sound and movement together*, such as running away from a gremlin, can give you ESM.
Remember if you're doing *social UIs*, you've got social signifiers, the focus point where you bring people together, shared behaviors and tasks and that feeling of being together in this virtual environment. The first thing I want you to do when you're designing *any* kind of VR experience is to *walk the scene*. What do I mean by that? I mean just get up and start physically walking around. Where is the user going to walk to? What is going to happen?
Start imagining, and then you can even build in – you know – low-tech is totally fine: scissors, string, the kind of design thinking toolkit is what we use. But walking that scene is really critical. The physical space, the distance to objects and menus: what that's going to be like? Are they going to reach out? Is it going to be here? Is it going to be too weird? Are they going to be looking down while the menu is going to be down, down, down or the head looking down, down here, like I've seen in a lot of VR UIs.
You can make a simulation of this, like a UI simulation. You can make a little video recording of all your flow sequences. Think of it like a *storyboard*, like a video storyboard, and *walking and doing improv*. So, with your fellow designers, your fellow team, your content people. And as you demo, think about what all that requires and because you're really looking for that *comfort level* as you deliver your content: you really want navigation and things like that to be secondary.
So, let's start by doing a little – let's get hands-on with a hand-washing VR piece. So, remember during pandemics and things the importance of washing hands. It actually turns out that in hospitals hand washing is one of the most important sanitation methods. So, here I've got a hand washing – it's an illustration like an infographic. And this is the kind of thing you might find in a hospital. The goal of this –
the users are med students who are just coming into medicine or existing healthcare practitioners who need to be reminded. Now, how would you bring this to life? What would you do here? Here's a scene. It's like a med operating room; here are some tools. What would you do? Think again about the affordances, think about that first 30 seconds, how to engage them. And maybe you show them that illustration, the one, the infographic, the step-by-step.
And then it's like, do it now. So, their task is to do all those steps. So, first you have the first one: wet your hands and use the brush. So, they pick up the virtual brush, the affordance. But what can you do to make this more interesting? Because it's a basic task; it's serious, it's healthcare, it's not entertainment. But how could you make it a little better? You know – maybe there's sound you can introduce. Maybe there's movement you can introduce. And then finally how would you kind of *bring this story to life*?