A good VR application lets the user believe that he or she is part of a situation that does not correspond to the physical world. A good AR application lets the user interact with objects that do not exist in the physical world. A successful immersion strongly depends on the AR/VR application’s usability. The illusion breaks if the handling is unintuitive or illogical. A user might even tire or in a worst-case scenario injure him- or herself if it is complicated or physically strenuous. Therefore, developing satisfying AR/VR applications is a task in usability.
Currently UX designers can draw on only few concepts and solution patterns for user interface in AR/VR. “How much information can I display in AR without overwhelming the user?” “How do I design a VR application so that the user can operate it intuitively and comfortably without motion sickness?”: At present we often find suitable answers to these questions for every other AR/VR user interface we design. What we are looking forward to is established best practices.
We hope to clear the path towards best practices with User Centered Design (UCD). For this, we iterate the stages of analysis, design and testing until we find an adequate solution. In the analysis phase we generate usablity goals,with which we develop various design ideas. These are realized in lightweight prototypes and then tested by real users.
This process is a proven and established method for web or smartphone applications. We now transfer it to AR/VR applications. And we’re still right in the middle of it. In our talk we would like to share our initial findings with you: We present ideas, methods and results from all three phases. We will use prototypes of various control concepts for VR with subsequent evaluation as a reference. We will talk about the difficulties and hurdles in developing VR/AR applications on the basis of an example project. And last but not least we look forward to discussing questions like “How can I transfer 2D design methods into 3-dimensional” or “Is the questionnaire of ISO 9241/110 also applicable to VR applications?” with the participants.