XR Design: Thinking, Talking, Making

XR Design

XR Design is a practice that involves many skills that combine together to create an experience like the video shown here: a short simulation showing the job of a Robotics Specialist inside of a factory.

This VR experience was made with a large collaborative team within an existing brand style. While I do much technical execution inside of Unity, there is also lots of thinking, problem solving, and communication involved in bringing an experience like this to life.


Job Simulation: Robotics Specialist


I use VR prototyping tools like ShapesXR where necessary in order to create plans for developers (in cases when I am not implementing myself), but also to plan out how I may envision certain interactions and animation sequences. In the medium of first person VR, this means planning for meaningful and safe motion of the player and the objects in their environment.

Where a part or tool may start, how far it goes, and where it stops are all vital pieces of information for developers, Instructional Designers, and Subject Matter Experts. Depicting this in easily digestible images helps with efficient collaboration. These first two images are a particular example: a user needs to use a tool to pick up and attach a compression ring to a piston. However, in the real world it is possible to accidentally lose this ring and have it pop out violently. How best to warn the user in a visceral way... without startling them so much as to endanger them in the real world?

Here we were able to plan out possible trajectories that were noticable, yet not aimed anywhere towards the user's face. Our fear was extreme flinching or tripping. Team and QA testing showed our approach to be optimally safe, yet memorable.

Other examples may be less high stakes, but need to feel satisfying and accurate. Casually bumping a part into place, tightening a screw, or animating a transition to a new vantage point. Various stakeholders may need input and understanding, or sometimes it is simply a way for me to plan around the 4th dimension of time.

Group Understanding

Internal Customer: Vendor Developer

Problem: Colloquial description of parts and sub-parts for a VR simulation causes confusion when describing highly specific aspects of orientation and position during design and development.

A piston has a head which holds three rings, one of which differs from the other two. Each ring gap needs to be placed in a specific rotation. When the piston is placed sideways during animation, with it’s head tilted slight towards the trainee, which ring is ‘the bottom ring’? Where is ‘12 o’clock’? What is ‘up’ in relation to the current position of the cylinder in the game space?

Clarifying existing Instructional Design taxonomy with visual designs that use assets developers directly use (clock metaphor where 12 is ‘up’ and 6 is ‘down’, ‘bottom ring’ differentiated from ‘two floating rings’)

Anchoring metaphor to 3D model asset features and their corresponding work tasks

Multiple designs provided for animation information but also doubling as sequenced scaffolding of knowledge (clock metaphor first, part naming next, design that can assume audience knowledge of taxonomy comes last)

Project Results: Vendor developer understanding of Instructional Design taxonomy, reducing confusion and increasing development speed. Design artifacts that effectively communicate animation sequence.

Personal results: Before Transfr I had no experience with Blender. Due to necessary design tasks I have learned basic Blender knowledge in order to solve problems, confirm asset needs, and clarify concepts within our sim documentation.

Examples that move

Animated examples of animated UI concepts for use in brainstorming sessions, design huddles, and collaborative design.

Shown are example approaches for a “X times per second” speed counter. Circular approach is reminiscent of common vehicles’ RPM counters and can offer a squarely compact visual footprint, whereas the linear bar graph offers a slimmer footprint and more abstract approach with fewer explicit mental associations.

These examples offered allowed for a more detailed discussion of various design aspects that may be overlooked when simply asking, “Can you make me a speedometer?”. Many specifics emerge: pointing needle vs a growing bar, linear vs. circular, complete vs. broken circles, vertical vs. horizontal linear graphs, “shaking” indicators to mimic fluctuating values, and so on.