19. Lesson Review

In this lesson we learned…

Design for people first.

It’s important to think about who we’re designing for. Who will our end users be? What will their backgrounds include? Are they new to VR? Do they have extensive VR knowldege?

What are personas?

Personas are a reference tool that allow us to imagine who our users are, what they like, what they dislike, what their hobbies are, what they do for work, how much VR experience they have, etc. This helps us ensure that we’re designing our experience with our end users in mind.

What is a statement of purpose?

A statement of purpose is one to two sentences that helps us remember the “why” of what we’re making and what its objective are. It helps us stay on track as we get more involved in the application. A good statement of purpose helps define a reasonable scope for the project.

Describe the various viewing angles and why are they important for VR?

The viewing angles represent how comfortable it is to view content in VR from a seated position. Positioning content that is in areas that are less comfortable should be a conscious design decision. You will likely have to do some extra work to get users to notice content in less comfortable areas.

Maximum Comfort Zone

This zone is the most comfortable and is directly in front of users. Content in this area requires minimal head movement so most people don’t have to move much to see it.

** Horizontal Stretch Zone**

This zone is the most comfortable. It’s 77 to 55 degrees to either side. Content in this area requires some head movement so most people will have to do a little work to see the content in this area.

Horizontal Strain Zone

This zone, also known as the peripheral zone, is at 102 to 77 degrees and it reaches the limits of the user’s neck. Users have to strain themselves or physically turn their body to see beyond this.

Horizontal Curiosity Zone

This is the area past 102 degrees and is generally behind the user. You’ll want to avoid putting important content in this area because most users will not see it.

Vertical Areas

Approximately 60 degrees above and 40 degrees below is the typical area for vertical content. The most comfortable is between 20 degrees up and 12 degrees down.

How close should my objects be to my users in VR?

Placing objects too close to the user (your VR camera rig) can be really uncomfortable for users. Unless you’re building an experience where you want the users to dodge, you should generally avoid placing objects inside the typical “safety bubble” of space around your users. Generally this is 0.5 meters is where many people begin to feel uncomfortable.

How can I ensure the text in my VR experience is clear and readable?

In general, we should avoid skinny fonts with light weight. Use medium or bold fonts with larger text size to ensure the text is readable.

Smaller text sizes closer to the user will be legible. As will larger text further away. Moving the text further away can make it hard to read if other objects in the scene get in the way. Putting text too close to users can make users uncomfortable. (Remember the safety bubble?) In general, 1 Unity unit (1 meter) is a good distance away from the camera.

Always be sure to test fonts and text sizes on your device. It’ll likely be really easy to read on the computer screen. However, when the device is rendered on the display in the headset, the readability will change because of the pixel density of the displays.

Why is it important to consider how your users will be moving around when in a VR experience?

Even in Google Cardboard experiences, we’re still somewhat limited with our user’s movement. If a user has to look at things and move their gaze quickly, it can be disorienting and uncomfortable. If a user has to track an object that goes in circles around them, they can get dizzy. Going in early and often will ensure that we will be considering our users and providing the best user experience possible.

Why should we sketch our scene?

Imagine if you went through the work of creating an experience that you thought was really awesome, only to find out it didn’t work and your users didn’t really like it or didn’t understand the point of it? Sketching our environments is a quick way of getting feedback on our ideas without having to go through the process of developing everything.