The subject of Extended Reality is for sure one of the most exciting out there. Just by looking on our beloved Medium — there are plenty of new articles every single day somehow related to XR. And that’s great!

There is a lot of potential for mass adoption of this technology, which is still evolving fast, but some people already think that the same way as many new ideas, it will burst like a bubble and everyone will forget about this phenomenon.

One thing is known for sure: time will tell. Personally, I think that with the progress of technology and adoption by huge companies, XR is the future and there is a massive space for it to grow and evolve much further than it looks today.

Okay, but the increase in popularity, even enormous, does not necessarily mean that designers will find something to do there… does it?

During the last, let’s say 10 years, it’s easy to observe how important UX Design has become. Just have a look at Feedmag’s archaic website from the 2000s’:

As you can see, it looks all messy and chaotic.
It’s not that Feedmag’s crew preferred it that way rather than anything else. The point is that at that time terms like accessibility, clarity, and intuitiveness were not the main focus of devs. The most important thing was to be ahead of the crowd. But now, with rising rivalry and technological progress, companies started to put a lot of attention on how to bring customers’ attention to their product, and convince them to stay.

That’s exactly where UX Designers enter the stage and make all of their magic.

It’s easy to notice that when you compare two versions of the same website — after a redesigned website seems to be much more pleasant and user-centered.

As I mentioned, it’s not only about how the product looks. Actually, UX Designers don’t focus on it at all — that’s the UI area. One of the main goals of User Experience Designers is to design as EFFECTIVE products as possible. That means for instance increased sales of e-commerce shops or time spent in-app by customers with only positive emotions.

And what can I say — it’s just my opinion, but history seems to repeat itself. We all have heard about the Web3 boom. From week to week, new companies enter the world of decentralization, virtual reality, and Metaverse — which before crypto crashed was one of the most popular words on the whole internet. I saw new articles about it just popped out every second back then.

If you look closer, you see that even with this scale of popularity, UX Designers haven’t been there yet or, if they were, an extreme rush didn’t allow them to create some high-quality products.

Looks familiar? For me, definitely YES. What that means? It’s simple — that is a huge opportunity for new specialists, who will be able to transfer their skills from Figma to Shapes XR, from mobile apps and websites to virtual- or augmented reality.

Just imagine that XR succeeds and our reality in 10 years will be based mostly on the XR experiences. It would be crucial for customers to have a positive experience, using intuitive products, which seamlessly mix our real sensations with virtual ones.

Another point is that if it will happen, a brand new sector of marketing will appear — XR Marketing will be possibly THE topic for many companies willing to pay millions for good, effective advertisements applied somehow to our AR or VR life.

Here’s the point where UX Designers change into XR Designers guys and, if only you are into this world, I recommend you to spend some time getting even basic skills in this area.

I’m so sure about it because where the future is, money flows.

And again, look closer who is investing in this subject and how much money they spend to create their own “reality” in digital. Just to mention a few of them:

It is hard not to believe that even at some point XR has its future, so keep your eyes open and just wait for opportunities.

In meantime, try to improve your skills wherever you find yourself in the XR world 🤓

Bright future of XR Design was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.