Lei Feng network (search "Lei Feng network" public concern) : According to the author of the article Burgess Tiger, focusing on VR content and technology, from time to time to share VR frontier discussion and technology development content.
Today, I ’d like to share with you Jason Jerald ’s speech on “people-centered immersive interaction designâ€. He is a 20-year VR professional who has participated in more than 60 VR projects in 30 companies including the world’s top 500 companies. Senior engineer. He is also a co-founder of Principal Consultant at Next Gen Interactions.
In his speech, he specifically discussed the basic theories of VR design, input devices, interaction modes and technologies, and iterations. Let's learn together.
First, the basic theoryAs we all know, VR design is a continuous fidelity continua. But sometimes, in order to achieve a better experience, we often have to make some trade-offs and compromises. For example, in interactive fidelity, we have to make a trade-off between real and untrue. A good example is: lasers. To better lock objects, we may need to shoot a line through the laser, although this may not be so common in real life.
Another thing we VR people need to master is the functional visibility (Affordances, hereinafter referred to as function) and signifiers proposed by Norman in the interaction design theory. What needs special attention is that the two are different. Functionality refers to the relationship between the user and the object. It defines which behaviors are feasible and how an object is manipulated by different users. The indicator signal provides clues and hints as to what an object should be. In a nutshell, we should provide clear indicators for each of our interactions.
In addition, there is an important concept in the VR design - the reference system. It is especially important in "human-centered VR design."
For example, the head reference system: it usually defines a transparent cursor to locate the screen coordinate system.
Another example is the virtual reality coordinate system: Since we can easily get lost in the virtual world, putting a compass at the foot makes it a good choice for the user to always have a sense of direction.
There is also a trunk reference system: We can put information and tools around the trunk so that it always follows the user so that when the user lowers his head he can see what he needs.
In addition, the real-world reference system: We can provide clues that have a solid connection with the real world to reduce VR vertigo. Through the real-world reference system, we can reduce the perceived conflict that the user sees and feels.
It is obvious that using a good reference frame is very helpful for VR design.
Second, the input deviceAs can be seen in the figure below, in addition to VR head-mounted displays, there are many hardware devices in the VR market today.
These hardware variants are basically dependent on the goals of different projects, but none of the input devices are suitable for the needs of all VR projects. So is there any one of these crazy input devices that is especially important for VR?
The answer is yes. That is our "hand". The hand is the most important human sensory organ, so that most of the activity of the human brain is the input and output of the hand. When today's VR experience can easily introduce human hands, we should use our hands effectively.
For the use of both hands as VR inputs, both hands do not need to be equivalent or used in parallel. The mainstream definition defines two-hand input as two types:
1. Symmetrical: Each hand performs an equivalent action, both hands can perform simultaneously, or only one hand at a time.
2. Asymmetrical: Each hand performs a different behavior, and non-dominant hands provide convenience for the dominant hand.
A good VR design should be that the user can work with both hands with ease, and is often used interchangeably with symmetric and asymmetrical modes.
Third, interactive modeAs shown in the following figure, Jason divides the interaction model into the following five categories: selection, operation, perspective control, indirect control, and composite mode. These five categories can be subdivided into 16 subcategories. Each subcategory can be further subdivided. Jason said that this classification is entirely from the perspective of the user.
Hand Technique
The first thing that people can think of when it comes to gesture tracking is to select and manipulate objects directly by hand. For example, as in real life, an object is picked up directly by hand, or it is natural to use gestures to communicate. Let us look specifically at a few examples below:
1. Hand Selection Pattern : Touching and grabbing objects as in the real world.
2. Interface in Hands : The user interface is displayed in the virtual palm of the hand, and the user can look at both hands in the virtual world to complete the work as in the real world. The following virtual handle is a good example.
3. Non-Realistic Hands : Sometimes we don't need to show an arm, and we don't even need to show a hand that is exactly the same as in the real world. For example, when you want to touch something farther than the palm of your hand can touch, not displaying the arm is a good choice. Another example is that some appropriate 3D cursors tend to be more intuitive than hands.
Other design patterns:
1. Image-Pan Pattern : Take the background as a 2D plane and use the X, Y coordinates of the 2D plane to directly select the object.
2. Widgets & Panels : Introducing 2D desktop applications into VR is sometimes a wise choice. For example, the user may not wish to exit your VR program for a calculation and go to the computer desktop to find a calculator application.
3. World-In-Miniature : Usually this model refers to a small map that we are familiar with. The user can move to that location by touching a certain location on the map.
4. 3D Multitouch Pattern : The virtual world is treated as an object, and the user can freely move, rotate, and scale the object. One of the greatest benefits of this model is that users will understand that the virtual world is moving rather than moving in the virtual world. In some scenarios, VR dizziness can be reduced.
Fourth, iterationThere is almost no absolute standard for VR. But I believe every VR colleague knows that iterative methods are more important than other methods for VR design.
To design a human-centered VR interactive experience requires a lot of feedback from users. And in the process, we may also experience many failures. But if you want to be successful, please get used to these failures. Usually a good VR design goes through the definition->production->learning cycle. In this round of cycling, we continuously evaluate our products in a professional manner so that we can finally produce highly available VR products.
Above is the iterative process
The figure above shows the professional evaluation process during the iterative process
V. SummaryThe most important aspect of human-centered immersive design is interactivity. Among the most important input tools that make good use of our hands will lead VR to a higher level. For many problems in VR products, we do not have a universal solution. The best solution is still iterative, iterative, and iterative!