What are the challenges of designing virtual reality experiences?
There are technical, physical and experiential challenges to designing virtual reality, augmented reality or mixed reality experiences.
The technical challenges are easier in that we know what a right answer looks like. The devices need to be smaller, lighter, wireless and higher resolution, as well as have a wider field of view, improved tracking, lower latency and so forth. That's all engineering. And, while it isn't easy, at least we know what the targets are.
Physical challengescenter around two main areas: exterior and interior comfort. Exterior comfort plays on some of the technical challenges: The gear needs to be lighter, not have wires and be comfortable enough for long-term use -- i.e., hours. At some point in the future, people will likely work in some form of augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR), so eight-hours-a-day use needs to be viable.
Interior comfort refers to issues around motion sickness, cognitive and emotional overload, and possible long-term side effects. There is a rough estimate that about 10% of the population is highly susceptible to motion sickness -- I'm one of them. There are technical parameters that can ameliorate some of the effects: Tracking needs to be fast and accurate; frame rates need to be high -- no or low latency; and the experience needs to be designed in such a way that it avoids certain interactions that can exacerbate motion sickness.
This leads to the longest tent pole in the room: experiential challenges of designing virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality (MR) experiences.
We are exceptionally good at telling stories on screens, as we're building on centuries of experience, dating back to the Greeks first creating the proscenium arch, which effectively put content within a boundary. Paintings, movies, television -- all are forms of narrative bounded by a screen border. VR, AR and MR remove those boundaries, and with it, a lot of our narrative forms lose efficacy. ...
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