Lesson Review

In this lesson we learned…

How does scale impact our experience?

Scale refers to how big or small everything in our scene is in relation to other objects and our user. Users can feel really tiny if everything in the scene is much bigger than them. Or they can feel like a giant if everything else is very small.

How can we ensure that our environment is designed for a human of our size?

One way to do this is to create a scene with a camera rig and a virtual door object. Build it to your device and then stand next to a real door. Go into VR and see if the virtual door is the same height as the door in the real world. You may need to take the headset off and on a couple of times to be sure. If the virtual door is bigger, you’ll need to shrink it down and try again. If the virtual door is smaller, you’ll need to increase its size and try again. Once you have the door object scaled appropriately, we now have a great reference point for the scale of the other objects in our scene.

How should I place objects in the scene that I want users to pay attention to?

Be sure that the objects are in a comfortable viewing area. (See previous lesson if you need a refresher on those.)

How can lighting impact the mood of a scene?

A brightly lit scene can seem light and cheery. A dark, dimly lit room can be mysterious or scary.

In the lighting window, you can opt to fine tune the scene’s Ambient Lighting property to help you develop the mood you’re trying to accomplish. In individual light sources, you can modify the color, range and intensity of the lights to create all sorts of effects.

Tip: Anything that doesn’t move in your scene should be marked Static. This will allow our baked lighting to do the magic of improving our app’s performance.

How do I conduct a user test?

Define achievable objectives for the user to test.
Decide upon questions that will give you information about how well you met your goals. For example, if your goal was to achieve a realistic scale, you might ask the question, “Does the scale feel appropriate?” The goal should be to determine if you should iterate upon the design, or move on to other parts of the application.

Tip: Avoid asking leading and dead-end questions. Both will not lead to information that is useful and actionable. Let your users elaborate and give you details about their experience.

Record user tests. Recording video lets you go back and rewatch as you need to. For VR, this can be challenging as we’ll need to record both the user and what they’re seeing.
Take detailed notes about what the user is saying and doing. This will allow you to notice trends between users that aren’t as apparent.

How many people should we user test with?

After 5 users, we start to see diminishing returns on the information we get from the tests. Ideally, we have a minimum of two users per test.

How can I incorporate findings from user tests into my design?

Things that come up during user tests can have many solutions. For example, if a part of the experience is confusing, what could we change about the app? We could opt to add in some tutorials or practice situations to help users understand what’s going on. We could choose to add some text somewhere in the scene. Or we could do something entirely different like choosing other models.