For UX designers, who are used to 2D interfaces, the transition to VR/XR design will feel like stepping into a completely new dimension. While the principles and stages of design thinking are the same, their application to immersive environments will be very different.
In screen-based UX design, design thinking is really helping us in creating great experiences on a flat screen only. In VR/XR, these principles need to be enhanced by considering multisensory awareness and also the physical movement. Here’s how each stage transforms in an immersive context:
1️⃣Empathize:
Beyond screen-based user interviews and observations, an empathy stage in VR aims to find out how users really feel in immersive environments. Conducting user research such as surveys, observational studies, interviews, and card sorting reveals key demands and difficulties to achieve the user’s goals and tasks, while usability testing and A/B testing will help us to improve the user interactions to achieve comfort and engagement.
2️⃣Define:
Instead of focusing on information, button placements, and navigation bars, VR/XR design prioritizes user objectives, comfort, interaction, obstacles, and spatial considerations in immersive environments. A clear problem statement can direct us on how users will interact with the objects or navigate through the virtual environment to achieve their objectives.
3️⃣Ideate:
Idea generation for VR also means thinking beyond screens. We are considering gestures, movement, and how users engage with their surroundings in a fully immersive environment to clearly achieve their objectives. The low-fidelity, high-fidelity, and wireframe mockups will be transformed into spatial sketches or even 3D mockups, which will also incorporate the storyboard.
4️⃣Prototype:
Rather than static wireframes or clickable mockups, low-fidelity VR/XR prototypes must be developed early within immersive platforms that include user movement and interaction to get early feedback.
5️⃣Test:
User testing in VR focuses on both interaction and physical comfort. Beyond usability, testing explores how users feel within the space, are they comfortable, engaged, and able to navigate intuitively without disorientation or fatigue? it also recommend doing rapid testing to identify additional problem in early stage
VR user interfaces are currently more difficult for users to manipulate than a traditional one, partly because of more degrees of freedom and partly because VR is still new, so people have less experience using it. Advice from usability pioneer Jakob Nielsen for how to employ usability studies to alleviate this problem.
When I first transitioned from 2D-based UX to XR, I realized that my familiar tools and methods weren’t enough to fulfill what exactly the user needed in a 3D environment. I had to rethink the concept of size and grid in XR and apply the concept of distance-independent millimeter (DMM) and rethink the “user flow” entirely and how does it translate when users can physically turn, walk, or look around freelly.
On my earliest projects, I experienced and was taught by it the importance of spatial awareness. There is a way to place interactive elements in certain circumstances; not all the UI is considered a spatial UI, and so on. It was really a clear lesson: designing for VR requires thinking in all dimensions, not just horizontally or vertically.
It wasn’t easy, but it deepened my understanding of user-centered design. Using design thinking in VR has forced me to think about how users feel is it really immersed, engaged, and comfortable?
Reference:
- Virtual reality user experience by Jakob Nielsen, https://youtu.be/f4GVG4C2BcE