1. RECAPSTONE STUFF WE LEARNED ABOUT DESIGN FOR VIRTUAL LOCOMOTION

2. TRAVRSE PROJECT Nick Anderson (nickand@uw.edu) Erick Lo Monica Caraway
Sponsor: HTC Americas
(Brian Espinosa)

3. TONIGHT Context—design issues in VR locomotion
TraVRse project and findings
Some design recommendations
Doing user research in VR
Current work and future directions

4. VR SYSTEMS Oculus Rift HTC Vive Samsung Gear Microsoft Hololens
Google Cardboard
Seated vs. room-scale
context

5. GENERAL VR DESIGN CONCERNS
Motion sickness
User presence
Sensory mismatch
Visual
Proprioceptive
Vestibular
Haptic
context

6. [video]

7. DESIGN CONCERNS FOR ROOM-SCALE LOCOMOTION
Virtual space vs. workspace
Avoid sickness
Transitions to/from walking
Move only at user intention
Extend 1:1 movement but keep cause/effect consistent
context

8. COMMON SOLUTIONS Teleportation Vehicles Augmented natural motions
context

9. TRAVRSE STUDY
For room-scale VR, what methods and design heuristics best support immersive locomotion experiences across virtual distances, while maintaining user presence and reducing sickness?
Lots of research and UCD led to 2 prototypes

12. STUDY SUMMARY Nine participants 4x Running Man 5x Jetpack
~1 hour sessions
Pre-test and post-test for sickness
Post-test qualitative measures for presence
study

13. SUCCESS MEASURES Conventional Locomotion task success
Sickness and presence instruments
Unconventional
User precautions in VE
Alternative user interactions
Limit-seeking
study

14. INTERACTIONS Transitions and inadvertent motion Controller orientation
Smoothness
Full-body steering vs. controller-only
Exertion
Sensory mismatch for flight experience
study

15. [video]

16. SATISFACTION Fun was had by all
Presence not directly related to ease/difficulty
Observed vs. user-reported immersion
study

17. EMBODIMENT AND SENSATION
Users want to feel their own effect on the VE.
Participants supplied sensations that didn’t exist in the prototype
Motion inputs vs. vestibular system
Falling vs. height exposure
study

18. [video]

19. DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Emphasize 1:1 walking as a core locomotion experience for room-scale.
Supports user presence and place illusions.
Counteracts motion sickness.
Frames other locomotion methods and scenarios.
outcomes

20. DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Support easy transitions between locomotion methods, especially to/from walking.
Walking is “default” for room scale
Users may forget to take action to resume walking.
outcomes

21. DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Align visual, proprioceptive, and controller feedback.  
Given other design considerations, minimize disagreement between users’ physical sensations in the workspace and their virtual experience.
outcomes

22. DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Mild sensory mismatch is tolerable and may not diminish user presence.
Try to anticipate detection thresholds…
outcomes

23. DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Fidelity does not necessarily contribute to user presence.
Visual realism and high experiential fidelity are probably less important.
Strong, consistent causal relationships between user actions and results in the VE are more important.
outcomes

24. DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Consider how context influences user expectations for locomotion methods.
Context matters.  How users encounter a locomotion method in the VE can support or limit the extent to which interactions are discoverable and intuitive.
outcomes

25. DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Consider design trade-offs carefully when presence-enhancing experiences approach sickness thresholds for users.
Presence: stomach “lurch” from rollercoaster.
Presence: “tingle” from height exposure.
Sickness: high-speed turns without feeling body lean.
outcomes

26. DOING USER RESEARCH IN VR
(What we learned)
Pay special attention to sensory aspects of research setting
Difficult to distinguish specific interactions from VE context
Wide range of proprioceptive self-awareness among users

27. CURRENT WORK
ConVRse: capstone project using VR for second-language learning
Cardboard and Unity3D for rapid prototyping
Presence is powerful
Heuristics—are they holding up?

28. FUTURE WORK? Vive and more 1:1 motion experiences
Demos/promos vs. useful VR
Documentary/POV content, virtual tourism
Uncanny valley work for social-presence and conferencing applications

29. RESEARCH IDEAS VR for social good!
HIT Labs—VR for pain management, phobias
Scientific training/simulation
POV shifting for cultural exchange
Cognitive development—language learning, memory
More work on “tolerable mismatches”
More work on haptic illusions

30. PLUG FOR WORKSHOP Todd Little
HCDE Skill Share: Introduction to Whitebox Prototyping with Unity3D
HCDE Design Lab (Sieg 233)
Saturday, May 21st, 1pm-2:30pm

31. THANKS! QUESTIONS? nickand@uw.edu