7 Super Practical Interactive design principles for virtual reality

Google has come to the benefit of mankind! Today @ 10 Realities Why this translation is not a pity even if it is spent, because it not only provides a simple and inexpensive way to experience virtual reality, but also a "do-it-yourself" version of the document. For designers, the 7 principles of design are validated, VR hot also on these two years, do not learn on the outdated slightly!

Virtual reality, the experience has been around since the middle of the 80, but it seems that technology is always dragging its tails. Finally, the development of smartphones and related technologies has made the incredible potential of virtual reality within reach. Today, we are in the midst of a virtual reality revolution.

From a high-end platform worth thousands of dollars to a system that can run on smartphones, the design of virtual reality only reveals its tip. Fundamentally, it is still a wild, urgent new concept of exploration and reclamation, Google knocked open the door.

Last year, they started to launch Google Cardboard: a simple, inexpensive way for anyone with a smartphone to experience virtual reality. As long as you download cardboard apps, buy (or make your own) cardboard glasses, you are among the virtual crowd. Want to develop your own application? It also provides an SDK. Then, in early 2015, a series of written design guidelines were published on Cardboard. The details set the basic principles, such as "How to avoid Vertigo" and "if the user feels grounded by a fixed object." But what better way to educate and inspire virtual reality designers than to experience them in person?

Do your own VR glasses document: Http://pan.baidu.com/s/1nuazspz (need to have a printer)

At Google's 2015 I/O Conference, the cardboard team launched the cardboard design Lab: Interactive "guide Applications" based on virtual reality, which interprets the standards and principles set earlier. Google works with UsTwo not only to design and develop related experiences, but also to test the water and to personally validate these principles through roadshow. Our common goal is to help everyone who is interested in virtual reality design and development, broaden their base and reveal more areas to explore.

Within the design lab, these principles are categorized into interactive chapters called "Basics" and "immersion." The basic part of the focus is to teach designers the fundamental principles of virtual reality, more or less the universal rule. The immersion part is more exploratory, both theoretically and cardboard design lab itself. First, we come to some of the basic principles:

▲ at the foot of the windmill looking around, locking the user's vision, confirmed the importance of head tracking.

　　1, head tracking.

If the user moves the head in the virtual reality environment, it should be reflected in the application, which is a cliché. "The most important rule in virtual reality design is to keep the head tracking at all times." The application must not stop tracking the user's head position movement. Even a short pause can cause users to feel sick. "This principle, as well as the" use of constant low-speed rate "and" let users in the virtual environment of the down-to-earth ", are the basic principles of virtual reality experience.

▲ we can see the positive and negative examples with the proper manufacture of the sports experience and moving through the harvesters.

　　2, acceleration

It is very subtle to allow users to walk through a virtual environment, because it is the most basic way to perceive space in humans. If you stand still, because the gravitational force will cause an acceleration, it determines your standing direction. It is unnatural to ignore acceleration or apparent uniform at all. The challenge is to either find the correct acceleration value or completely replace the acceleration with some other thing. In this version of cardboard Design Lab, our team experimented with 83 milliseconds of acceleration, followed by a uniform motion of about 3 meters per second, and a slowdown of 266 milliseconds. We think this is a good plan, but as a principle of design lab, we want to get some feedback from the designer community.

▲ When the balloon is detonated, there is a difference between the effect and no cross star.

　　3, using the cross star

Because most virtual reality systems are unable to track the eye position (so far), it is not possible to tell the application where the user's current line of sight is staying. So, the cross star can help the application to mark the center point of the picture. In the example above, we had the user try to detonate the balloon without the help of a cross, and they seemed to deviate from the target several times before they found the trick. We've never seen the use of a cross in virtual reality before, but this is an excellent example of something so trivial that opens up a door for designers to create a better experience.

The goal of using a cross is to make it easy for users to realize which objects are available, or to quickly browse through the menu, and so on. We are careful not to allow the design of the application of the cross, sometimes we will hide it, while in the pilot's version to maintain the minimalist style and basic functions. Designers can use this as a basis for design and iteration, whether they want to design a cross, a camera, or anything else they think is beneficial to the experience.

Understanding the basics, designers are going into the immersion principle. Inspired by the Muir Forest in northern San Francisco, the immersion section of Design Lab teaches designers some specific principles that, while not absolutely necessary for virtual reality applications, are highly recommended to provide users with a good experience as much as possible. The following cases are all about these principles and we think they will change dramatically over time:

　　4, utilization ratio

There are many aspects of virtual reality have a very special experience, the most compelling, is the user and the environment around the proportion of changes in the visual impact. When building the design lab, UsTwo tried a number of different proportions, eventually choosing the perspective you saw above, making people feel small and even humble. Because the purpose of immersion principle is to stimulate emotional response. We feel that allowing designers to experience the grandeur and vastness of the world around them helps to jump-start their imaginations.

▲ Follow the owl in the right ear and you will find an owl standing on the branch gazing at you.

　　5, Space sound

There is a very unique concept in the three-dimensional and virtual reality game, where the sound in the space is fixed to the location of the sound source in your surroundings. So the sound from an object to your left sounds like it's coming from the left side of your headset. In the above example, the user hears the owl's tweet, looks to the right, and then discovers the owl in the corresponding position, standing on the branch gazing at himself. Although simple, this lesson tells designers that in the creation of virtual reality, sound effects are endless possibilities.

　　6, watch the Tips

The use of gaze tips may be a new concept for designers who are just beginning to design virtual reality, which is one feature we are looking forward to evolving over time. The gaze tip is based on the direction of the user's gaze and experiences corresponding feedback. The experience may be more subtle, "hover", or it can be triggered based on events, such as a large number of monsters behind a horror game. In our case for cardboard design lab, looking at the stars will activate a hover-state gaze cue to show a series of constellations.

▲ reach the top of the mountain on foot, reach the final goal, see the sea sunset.

　　7, Give it beauty

The final immersion principle? That's giving it beauty. Focus on the visual beauty of the creation to benefit the user's immersive experience. Across the forest, at the end of the course-wide hike, the user is presented with a view of the cliff top overlooking the sea, allowing them to witness the sunset. We want users to have a moment's respite before they start their virtual reality design trip and immerse themselves in the inspiration.

"Our goal is not to create the Bible in the realm of virtual reality," said Toph Brown,ustwo's project manager, Cardboard Design Lab project member. "Virtual reality is developing at a high speed, and it's a team sport-everyone in the industry is working together to make virtual reality easier and more useful." Because of this, it would be foolish to draw a line of demarcation and declare that ' it is the way to do it '. At the same time, we think that some ideas are ripe enough for us to reach a consensus. Through cardboard design Lab, we try to create an experience that reflects and validates these concepts. We hope that the designers will accept it and create beauty in the virtual real world based on it. The best thing is that we're just on the road and there's a lot of waiting to discover. ”

The original purpose of the Cardboard Design Lab project is not only a case of possibility, but also an interactive learning experience that allows designers and developers to accept our ideas and move forward to build their own products. This requires inspiration, need to communicate, need to embark on the journey of virtual reality, to create the people really want to use and experience the application. Today is the first step, we are looking forward to the feedback from the designers group, Google, UsTwo and all the virtual reality designers can continue to explore the future.