Guidelines for Creating Immersive Experiences

Oct 8, 2022

Close-up view of the bust of david, wearing an Oculus Quest VR headset.

Some notes I wrote down while taking this course: IAT 445: Immersive Environments, from The VR Book.

Design

Use aesthetic intuition to drive initial attraction and positive emotions.
Use binaural cues with head pose to give a sense of sound location.
Consider how the relative importance of depth cues varies as a function of distance. Some depth cues are more relevant at different distances.

Calibrate the system and confirm often that calibration is precise and accurate.
To reduce risk of injury, design experiences for sitting. If standing or walking is used, provide protective physical barriers.
If the highest-priority goal is to minimize VR sickness (e.g. when the intended audience is non-experienced VR users), then do not move the viewpoint in any way whatsoever that deviates from actual head motion of the user.
Be careful about adding visual motion that results in users trying to incorrectly physically balance themselves in order to compensate for the visual motion.
Never add visual head bobbing.
For real-world panoramic capture, unless the camera can be carefully controlled, the camera should only be moved with constant linear velocity, if moved at all.
When using analog sticks on a gamepad to navigate or when using other steering technique, it is best to have discrete speeds and the transition between those speeds to occur quickly.
Design for physical rotation instead of virtual rotation whenever possible. Consider using a swivel chair (although this can be troublesome for wired systems).
Be careful of the viewpoint moving up and/or down due to hilly terrain, stairs, etc.

Design interfaces so users can work with their hands comfortably at their sides or in their laps with only occasional need to reach up high above the waist.
Use text located in space instead of 2D heads-up displays so the text has a distance from the user and occlusion is handled properly.
Consider getting a user’s attention first through spatialized audio to prepare them in advance for an event.
Make interfaces intuitive by enabling complexity to be understood with the simplest mental model possible that can achieve the desired result, but not simpler.

Inform users in a casual way that some users experience discomfort and warn them to stop at the first sign of discomfort, rather than “tough it out.” Do not overemphasize adverse effects.
Do not freeze, stop the application, or switch to the desktop without first having the screen go blank or having the user close her eyes.
After VR usage, inform users not to drive, operate heavy machinery, or participate in high-risk behaviour for at least 30–45 min and after all aftereffects have passed.