Designing VR Tools: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

At a recent Designers + Geeks talk, Jody Medich and Leap Motion's Daniel Plemmons talked about some of the discoveries our team has made (and the VR best practices we’ve developed) while building VR experiences with the Oculus Rift and the Leap Motion Controller.

http://blog.leapmotion.com/designing-vr ... -bad-ugly/

The TL;DW version:

As designers, we’re in the same boat as we were in 1994 with web design, because we’re still trying to figure out the basic principles involved. We don’t know what the equivalent of the blue underlined link is yet.

What is AR/VR bad at?

• Legible text


• Tactile feedback


• The real world (i.e. bumping into stuff)

What is AR/VR good at?

• Space


• Multitasking


• Simulations and situational therapy


• Fake limbs

Best practices for VR design

• Don’t make me sick!


• Virtual safety goggles


• It’s more like designing a room full of tools than a screen with buttons


• Lessons from iterating on Arm HUD


• Affordances


• Depth is an illusion


• Use sound


• Pay attention to the user


• Use human scale


• Ease people into AR/VR