XR UX Foundations: Immersion and Presence

Sounds and visuals can make or break an immersive experience, so all aspects of the virtual environment should support the story. If something looks or sounds different than what the user expects — such as a cell phone ringer sound effect being used for a radio call, or radio sound effects for a phone call— our brains will throw us out of the immersive experience.

The environment, visuals, story and sound should all support each other.

Virtual environments can be overwhelming at first — especially to novice users, so in addition to creating an immersive world, it is also important to ensure that people have time to acclimate and learn the rules of this new world.

VR users are a captive audience. They have nothing to do but sit or stand and wait while the environment is loading. Long load times on traditional platforms are bad enough, but within a virtual environment they are even more noticeable and can be all the more frustrating — and in some cases even confusing. However, in the cases where long load times are unavoidable, there are design practices that can be used to reduce the frustration and confusion.

When designing for VR, sound is an essential element that can really help to bring the virtual world to life. VR isn’t truly immersive without the effective use of convincing audio.

In order to enhance immersion and presence while decreasing discomfort for people, keep height in mind when positioning cameras. Due to our innate body height awareness, we tend to subconsciously — or even consciously — notice if our real-world height doesn’t match our virtual height.

In VR there are two options for camera origins — floor, and eye (or device). I’ll highlight the pros and cons of each.

Motion is an important aspect of XR experiences since it can be used to enhance interactions, support the narrative, and direct people where to look. However, if there are too many elements moving at once, it can get distracting and confusing very quickly.

If you’re creating immersive 360 animations within your experiences, there are some important differences in how you handle the cinematography and motion in order to prevent people from getting sick.

The rules change in cinematography for immersive film for how you’re able to get people to look where you want them to look at any given time within the experience.

Virtual worlds can be overwhelming due to all of the things that fight for the your attention. Similar to gaming, providing in-world wayfinding is a good way to direct people and keep them focused on the objectives. This is especially useful for training simulations since you want them to focus on certain areas, often in a specific order.

As this technology becomes a more common part of our everyday work life, multitasking will become more prevalent. This in turn brings up new challenges in regards to workflow interruptions. When we are trying to focus on tasks on our computer or phone, we have the option to set our communication status to “Do Not Disturb.” As time goes by, these same notification preferences and settings will become necessary within XR platforms and applications as well.

When designing a solution that is going to be used across multiple technologies and platforms, such as VR and 2D-mode on desktop, the translation between those platforms should be well-thought-out.

It is important to ensure that the controller mapping and other interaction elements are platform-specific and that UX best practices are followed for each, in order to create the best possible experience for the user.

One of the most common mistakes I see people making when they’re just starting out prototyping in 3D XR tools is that they’ll miscalculate or completely miss the scale and sizing of 3D objects within the digital space.

Understanding these basic principles will help you regardless of the 3D prototyping tool used.

To create fully immersive experiences, we need to understand the scale of objects in relation to the human body.

Scale and size are commonly thought of as the same thing. However, in 3-dimensional design, their meanings and uses are very different.

Here are some practical tips for scaling and sizing objects appropriately in Bezi.

Here are some practical tips for scaling and sizing objects appropriately in Unity.

Here are some practical tips for scaling and sizing objects appropriately in ShapesXR.