UX: general design principles & patterns

User Experience Design

The start of any design process of Virtual Reality Experiences usually starts with an enquiry into 3D-design in general, Storytelling, UX & Interaction Design, Game Engines, Modelling, HMD & controllers and in a fresh interdisciplinary team of students, it can be a bit of a search. Therefore, I have deconstructed all steps and placed them into five scrum-sprints. Handy as a starting point for filling in your Trello-boards.

article 0: UX + VR: 14 Guidelines for Creating Great First Experiences

article 1: Basic sprint planning: basic Steps towards Design & Development of Virtual Reality Experiences article 2: Design Process case VR Card Game article 3: How to design common/basic interactions in VR article 4: 3D interaction patterns for XR. article 5: Brownboxing, prototyping low fidelity prototypes

Process

0. Degrees of Freedom actual world

!(2016) article

I. Context

Analyse your design brief carefully and see what needs to be clear:

• Who is my user group? Who are my stakeholders?

• Why does my client want to have a VR/AR/MR experience? What the proposed purpose of the product? And, do we agree?

• When will the product be used? What does this moment look like? Is it a casual moment? Does the moment occur repetitiously?

• Where will the product be used? What kind of environment? What kind of feel does this environment have? Who are present? And who are not?

• How is the product used? Does it need support? Is that available?

• What are we going to make that is contributory to the clients needs and society as well?

II. User journey & Scenarios

Come up with as many perspectives and scenario's as you can think of. And then sort the best ones out.

Ghostbusters

https://www.appcues.com/blog/user-journey-map

article 6: Ghostbusters & Human Experience Design Principles article 7: A Beginners' Guide to User Journey Mapping

III. Explore Common Design Patterns

article 8: 3D interaction patterns for XR.

• ​Using Interaction Design Methods for Creating AR and VR Interfaces explain the profession of Interaction Design from its core and relates it to VR and AR Interface Design.​
• ​http://ui-patterns.com/patterns

IV. Create Flow Charts

V. Build Rapid Prototype and do hands-on testing.

Additional Material

• 3D interaction patterns for XR: Mischa Fierer has placed many examples of 3D interaction patterns on this website. It's great to get started and learn about interaction patterns, before you dive into the matter deeply in the upcoming chapters.
• Using Interaction Design Methods for Creating AR and VR Interfaces explain the profession of Interaction Design from its core and relates it to VR and AR Interface Design.
• http://ui-patterns.com/patternsRyan Betts' article "Practical VR: a design cheat sheet" provides an overview of practical implementations for VR interaction design. Handy, and a bit more in-depth than the other articles.
• Designing VR Tools: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Jody Medich and Daniel Plemmons talked about some of the discoveries their team has made (and the VR best practices they’ve developed) while building VR experiences with the Oculus Rift and the Leap Motion Controller.
• Discover and share 3D interaction ideas and UX patterns for AR and VR. A bunch of familiar design patterns that can be used. Ideal when you are looking for ways to implement certain interactions and are not familiar with the possibilities.

• Matt Sundstrom's article Immersive Design: learning to let go of the screen provides some background on UI-design for VR. Helpful to get started with VR and Interaction.
• Ishaani Mittal's article "Designing Virtual Reality Experiences" explains some basics that beginning VR-experience designers should keep in mind. 'Even though the User Centered Design process remained the same, the design language which worked in a 2D space, did not necessarily hold true for a VR environment.'

IEHI