UCSC Social VR Research and Design
Collaborating in a UX team, I researched and implemented effective ways to present instructions to users, in a VR enviroment.
Info on the Project:
This project was sponsered and run by the department of Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz.
High Level Overview
*Note: This project encompassed 2-3 unique studies, to understand conversation balance, and develop methods for balancing conversation in a Virtual Enviroment.*
Here is an outline of the UX Process, for our study in Conversation Balance...
Research:
- Predicted best method of giving instructions in a VR environment
- Obtained market feedback
Ideation (Brainstorming):
- Identified ways to guide users through our product, using the "How Might We..." (HMW) brainstorming method
Creating Personas:
- Developed user's stories (identify use cases and who the user/ actor is)
- List all the user's needs
Journey Mapping:
- Mapped out how a user will interact with the product
- Highlighted what user's want to achieve by using our product
Prototyping:
- Designed a simple layout for the interactive interface : an Informational Kiosk
Final Product:
-Obtained user reactions to final product
-Observed a 30% increase in user comprehension when reading instructions from an interactive kiosk in VR (sampled from a post-study survey)
-Presented findings and final design itterations to stakeholders
Future Projects:
- Developed follow-up designs to improve comprehension of instructions by utilizing a kiosk in a VR enviroment
- Projected an overall 15% increase in user focus and a 25% increase in task performance, if kiosk instructions included simple video instructions instead of written instructions.
Research
The VR lab at UCSC has been doing research on how Virtual Environments affect social interactions and communications.
Our UX team in the VR lab was tasked to find the best way to present instructions to users, in a virtual environment.
We hypothesized that VR headset users would find an Informational Kiosk helpful. The Information Kiosk would give written information about the study, while the user is engaged in the Virtual environment.
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We asked users questions to determine the usability of an Informational Kiosk in VR.
Based on user feedback, they're looking for the following:
*Users want an easy way to navigate and learn about the study, within the Virtual Reality enviroment
*Responses showed a majority of people want few to no instructions
We grouped together three different learner types to create semi-personas...
1.) Visual learners: (learn by example)
2.) Instruction Readers: (learn by reading instructions)
3.) Physical Manipulators: (manipulate things to figure it out)
Brainstorming
To determine the best way of guiding users in our study, our team of Designers created How Might We (HMW) questions, to brainstorm possible solutions.
The output of our first discussions, were stored on a brainstorming board in Mural.
When we ask HMW questions, it is a way for UX designers to “shed light on problems” and identified possible solutions.
The HMW process is described HERE...
In a second discussion, we organized our main problems into three categories.
We narrowed down our brainstorm to two common concerns...
1.) How we can convince users to read the instructions?
2.) What are the best ways to increase instruction usability?
We were able to further narrow our problem statement summarized in one question:
“What is the best way to create engaging instructions, that maximize our design's usability?”
Creating Personas
Developing personas helped us visualize who our potential users might be and how we can improve the user's experience.
Lina the College Student
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aspiring cognitive science major
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interested in the fields of AI and VR
Gabe the Tech Guy:
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male in his mid twenties
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working for a tech company as a software engineer
Mark a Professor
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male in his early 50’s
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teaches psychology in a university
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enthusiastic about using VR to enhance human communication and learning
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not very good with tech
Given our allotted time constraints, we decided to focus on 1 persona.
We chose Lina the student, because her persona was the most relevant to our study.
We performed our study on campus, so we had a large population of students participating in our VR study.
We further focused our goals:
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make information quick and easy to use
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no complex terminology
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include quick refresher on use of VR
Journey Mapping
Our Journey map was geared toward Lina's use of the Information Kiosk.
This is Lina's Journey Map in Figma.
The Journey map highlights user's needs and the methods aimed to help them reach their goals.
Prototyping
Our team created an interactive prototype of a kiosk. The prototype included 3 large buttons, each representing 3 different parts to our study.
Each part of the study required a different set of instructions to fulfill each task.
We began drawing sketches of a simple layout...
*We chose to put a ducky in the center of the table as a "speaker" for the instructions
After looking around the VR room, the user will feel drawn to the colorful Kiosk (table).
When they walk up to the kiosk, they are prompted with a message from the ducky on how to use the kiosk.
After pressing each button, the user is prompted to enter each room. These rooms guide the user through the 3 parts of the study.
Final Product
*This is a screenshot from one of our UX meetings, using Mozilla Hubs
This was our final product, where each button corresponds to a colored room, and describes the tasks associated with each room.
After implementing our kiosk design in the research study, the post-study survey showed that 30% of people understood the intent of the 3 study tasks .
Follow Up Research
After a few rounds of implementing our design in the VR environment, we found that having the buttons unlabeled was confusing for users.
We conducted follow up design meetings to create our newest design prototype.
Our newest design prototype includes button icons...
For future additions...
Another element that the UX team discussed, was for the ducky to present projected video examples, over its head.