How to Design for Augmented and Virtual Reality
How this course will help your career
What you will learn
- How to design for AR and VR from novel and unique perspectives
- The three keys to designing for this new medium: Storytelling, Imagineering, and Improvisation
- How to enhance immersion in order to improve your users’ experience
- How to create 3D personas to improve spatial navigation, layout, and content
- How to incorporate the brain’s responses to 3D interfaces by taking visual, auditory, and kinesthetic interactions into account
- Practical tips to avoid known UX problems when designing for AR and VR
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are quickly becoming huge areas of technology, with giants like Apple, Microsoft and Google competing to provide the next big AR or VR experience. Statista predicts that the worldwide user base for AR and VR will reach 443 million by 20251, meaning that it is becoming increasingly important for UX designers to know how to create amazing VR and AR experiences. Designing for 3D experiences will require completely new ways of thinking about UX design—and the question is, are you well equipped to tackle this new field of design?
The good news is that while AR and VR hardware and software is changing dramatically, UX principles and techniques for 3D interaction design will remain consistent. It’s just that new opportunities and sensitivities will present themselves to designers and developers. This course will give you the 3D UX skills to remain relevant in the next decade and beyond. You’ll be able to create immersive experiences that tap into the novel opportunities that AR and VR generate. For example, you will need to bring together key UX concepts such as emotional design, social UX, and gamification in order to create an immersive AR or VR creation.
AR and VR need to be easy to use in order to provide users with experiences that wow. Avoiding common usability mistakes and applying the principles of storytelling will help you carefully craft 3D experiences that delight, intrigue, amuse, and most of all evoke the response you intended. You’ll need to engage users in first-person narratives by making use of spatially dynamic UI’s, including gaze, gesture, movement, speech, and sound—often used in combination.
During the course, you will come across many examples and case studies from spatial and holographic interface designers. You will master how to create immersive 3D content for AR and VR that provides rich user experiences. The course offers exercises and challenges throughout, all aimed at helping you and/or your team practice your emerging or existing AR/VR skills. You will be taught by Frank Spillers, who is a distinguished speaker, author, and internationally respected senior usability practitioner with over 15 years of experience in the field.
Gain an industry-trusted UX Course Certificate
You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you complete the course. You can highlight them on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website.
Our courses and Course Certificates are trusted by these industry leaders, who have taken up company memberships with the IDF:
Who should take this course
This course is aimed at designers, developers, and content creators who are looking to learn or enhance their skills when designing for AR and VR. Despite this being one of our advanced courses, it contains beginner, intermediate, and advanced material. Unlike other AR and VR design courses that dwell on introductory content, we quickly move beyond the basics in order to give you strategies and techniques to develop your 3D UX design skills.
This course will appeal to:
- UX designers, interaction designers, and 3D UI designers keen on learning how to create immersive 3D content
- Unity developers and 3D developers who want to to create user-focused experiences
- Product managers interested in, or working with, the development of AR/VR products
- Storytellers, content creators, and filmmakers who want to use their storytelling abilities to create engaging AR/VR content
- Marketers interested in taking advantage of AR/VR technology in their marketing strategy
- Creative designers, artists, and entrepreneurs who are looking to set themselves apart by tapping into the new market for AR/VR content
Courses in the Interaction Design Foundation are designed to contain comprehensive, evidence-based content, while ensuring that the learning curve is never too steep. All participants will have the opportunity to share ideas, seek help with tests, and enjoy the social aspects afforded by our open and friendly forum.
Learn and work with a global team of designers
When you take part in this course, you will join a global multidisciplinary team working on the course and the exercises at the same time as you. You will work together to improve your skills and understanding. Your course group will be made up of an incredibly diverse group of professionals, all of whom have the same objective—to become successful designers. It’s your chance to learn, grow, and network with your peers across the planet.
1 Statista, Forecast user base of the augmented and virtual reality (VR) software market worldwide in 2020 and 2025, by segment (in millions), 2018
Lessons in this course
- Lessons become available at a schedule of one lesson per week.
- Lessons remain open for you forever and have no deadlines.
- There is no time limit to finish a course.
- You have permanent access to your course material, answers, and classmates for the entire duration of your membership.
- Estimated time to complete: 15 hours 38 mins spread over 7 weeks.
Lesson 0: Welcome and Introduction
Available once you start the course. Estimated time to complete: 43 mins.
Lesson 1: Getting in the Space (3D UX)
Available once you start the course. Estimated time to complete: 2 hours 15 mins.
Lesson 2: Getting familiar with 3D UI’s
Available anytime after Feb 28, 2019. Estimated time to complete: 1 hour 44 mins.
Lesson 3: Designing 3D Story Flow
Available anytime after Mar 07, 2019. Estimated time to complete: 2 hours 2 mins.
Lesson 4: How to Wireframe 3D Interactions
Available anytime after Mar 14, 2019. Estimated time to complete: 2 hours 36 mins.
Lesson 5: Social VR and Collaborative Virtual Environments
Available anytime after Mar 21, 2019. Estimated time to complete: 1 hour 16 mins.
Lesson 6: Bringing It All Together
Available anytime after Mar 28, 2019. Estimated time to complete: 3 hours 36 mins.
Lesson 7: Validating Your 3D Experience
Available anytime after Apr 04, 2019. Estimated time to complete: 1 hour 26 mins.
Lesson 8: Course Certificate, Final Networking, and Course Wrap-up
Available anytime after Apr 11, 2019.
Learning paths
This course is part of 3 learning paths:
How others have benefited
Laura Gieco, Australia
“The course was a great introduction for me to the world of VR/AR. The instructor is very engaging, knowledgeable and gives lots of examples from the real world and his own experience. I also enjoyed doing the in class exercises and little challenges. Definitely helped me to learn how to think when designing VR/AR.”
daksh sahni, United States
“Loved the multi modal teaching method—video, exercises and assignments. The community in the course was also very strong and everyone contributed a lot—I learnt a lot from other peers as well. The instructor is very effective, knowledgable and really hit on the topics that I needed to learn in this course! In fact, I have been interviewing and some of the answers to the questions the hiring managers asked me came from what I learnt in this course.”
Vera Dragilyova, United States
“It is an honor to be part of your organization, and I am looking forward to growing and contributing to the field, thanks to the information, courses, and advice that your organization provides.”
How to advance your career with IDF courses
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Attend lessons at your own pace
Each week throughout the course, you get access to a new lesson, but you can move through the lessons at your own pace. This means you can learn before you leave for work, or in between breaks — in as little as 15 minutes per day.
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Network online and offline
Network with your fellow course-takers online, through discussion forums inside lessons. You can also connect with your peers offline via IDF’s Local Groups. Local Groups connect you with other designers around your city who share the same passion in UX design as you.
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Advance your career
Get a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you’ve scored at least 70% on a course. Highlight your Course Certificates on your résumé, your LinkedIn profile, or your website to showcase your newly mastered skills.
Start advancing your career now
Become a member to take “How to Design for Augmented and Virtual Reality”. Take any other IDF UX courses at no additional cost. Take a concrete step forward in your career path today.