How do we enable an unassisted first-time VR experience? 

WHAT IS IT?

The first thing we learned about introducing people to VIVE is that “seeing is believing.” While it is almost impossible to describe the experience of being in VR to someone, all it takes is a few moments in the headset to generate a sense of wonder.

For the first several years VIVE was on the market, the team invested heavily in person-to-person demonstrations at trade shows and events, walking people through donning the headset and controllers and chaperoning them in the play space while the demo content ran.

To scale our reach to a broader audience we knew we needed to do something else: create an experience that was approachable and intuitive to a broad range of experience levels. By enabling people to successfully experience virtual reality on their own, it would both remove some of the barriers to entry and reinforce the value proposition of the content itself, and aid in sales conversions.

The VIVE Demo Kiosk accomplished just that. The team conceived, tested and built the demo kiosk over 3 months deploying to over 100 locations.

 

 

CHALLENGES

VR products are an entirely new category for people. In addition, we knew from our experience designing the retail OOBE that the order of operations, from donning and adjusting headset and controllers, to starting the VR experience was complex and sometimes daunting.

To expect the customer to accomplish all of this in a public setting, we knew we needed to establish trust and design a safety net so that users would feel comfortable trying the kiosk.

INFORMING THE DESIGN

DATA COLLECTION

To better understand customers’ behavioral reactions to this new product, we used these techniques:

 

 

THE BUSINESS

I wanted to be sure that not only were we giving the users a great experience but also that we were meeting business objectives. To that end, I worked closely with the product marketing team to ensure that key customer insights and business requirements were captured and incorporated into our solution.

SYNTHESIS

KEY DRIVERS

Armed with the above knowledge and business requirements, information was prioritized and key project drivers were established. 

With that, I created a high-level journey map.

 

CHALLENGES

Then a critical decision needed to be made.

There were two schools of thought in regards to when to put the user into VR: before they choose their experiences or after. This decision would determine the foundation of the flow and how the experience picker would be designed.

 

Ultimately we went with getting the user in after the experiences were chosen. 

 

USER FLOW

Armed with knowledge, I created a foundational user flow to build upon.

 

WIREFRAMES

From there, I took each bucket and fleshed out screens and stitched the whole experience together into a cohesive user journey. 

DESIGN VERIFICATION

PROTOTYPING

With the wires complete, we worked with the development team to build rough prototypes of the experience to do some quick internal testing with key stakeholders. 

 

CHALLENGES

Regarding the 2D interface that allows users to choose the experience they want to try–the major finding was that we needed to consider the different types of input that were available to the user. I quickly created prototypes to better illustrate how UI interaction using the various input models would look and rapidly iterate on the interaction models.  
 
The following are findings specifically for how users expand the experience carousel and select their desired experience.

 

 

 

EXECUTION

VISUAL DESIGN 

During code implementation, visual assets were created in parallel and applied.

 

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Because of the small team, I was required to directly implement the design assets as well as modify code to get the desired results.

 

INTENDED DESIGN:

ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION:

ADJUSTED PRODUCT:

 

PLAY TESTING

Through cycles of user testing and iterative updates during implementation, we came upon some more discoveries. 

 

A) First-time users don’t want to make the decision

We made a default set of experiences that were preselected for the user. A random tile that automatically chose an experience was also implemented. 

 

B) People have a general idea of what they like

Users had an idea of the type of experience but didn’t want to spend the time reading about each one. We implemented randomization tiles that randomly chose an experience based on the selected interest.

 

C) Returning users didn’t want to sit through the tutorial again 

We implemented a skip button on the main UI as well as a way to skip through the tutorial by holding both trigger buttons. 

 

D) Some users jump straight into the headset

We implemented a proximity sensor to understand when this happens, provided a message to the user asking them to take off the headset, and take the main interface out of video mode and into the experience picker UI. 

REFLECTION

FLEXIBILITY WITHOUT COMPLEXITY 

In hindsight, we could have done a better job accommodating both “VR first” and “Picker first” entry points to the experience, with relatively little additional effort, rather than forcing the “Picker first” approach.
 
Enabling a picker interface inside the headset could have been as simple as a screen mirror of the desktop 2D interface if we didn’t have the resources to build a completely VR-optimized version. 
 
While the order of when and what guidance we would provide to the user would change, it would have been easy to adjust based on the user’s point of entry. 
 
This would lend to a more robust system that could be used even without a screen and the design could be applied to the all-in-one PC-less headsets to provide a consistent experience across products. 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Hesitancy to being blindfolded to the outside world and making yourself vulnerable without the trust of an attendant to watch your back is inherently human. While our intent was to create an experience that would garner trust, this couldn’t be solved unless we provided a live pass-through view inside the headset, which was difficult to do without obstructing their experience or affecting immersion.

Being able to capture metrics to better understand when to deploy attendants at what locations proved to be more valuable.