Monday, 27 April, 2020 UTC
Summary
Introduction
ARCore Elements by GoogleAR experiences are challenging to design and develop. Performing both simultaneously, can prove frustrating to any AR/VR developer and also result in a poorly designed or an incomplete experience. There is a need to define a framework for designing better AR experiences. UX Designers and UX Researchers have been exploring this technology for years and have formulated several guidelines.
In this article, I have made an attempt to apply Design Thinking to Augmented Reality as well as highlight the concepts to learn from a great AR experience. Design Thinking comprises 5 major phases i.e empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test. I am going to deep dive into how each phase connects with the design concepts involved in designing any AR experience.đź’«
Credits : Interaction Design FoundationPlease keep in mind that I was not a part of the ARCore Elements development or design team in any way whatsoever (but would love to be!). This article is solely based on my own imagination and explains how the design thinking process for this app might have been followed. Any resemblance to the actual process is purely coincidental🙂
The Process
đź‘ĄEmpathiseđź‘Ą
Let’s begin with understanding the developers(users exploring AR) and their thoughts about AR in general.
I released a Google form on social media to develop a rich understanding of the problems they face in designing and developing AR experiences. 25% of the developers complained that there is a lack of standard design and development guidelines. I am assuming that there were more than 25% developers who had the same complaint before 2018(the year in which Google released the UX Design Guidelines for AR). By conducting user research iteratively, the designers were able to focus on one of the problems that the developers(“users” for designers) were facing i.e a set of standard design guidelines for AR.
Another key problem being faced by 40% of the developers who filled up the form, is the lack of tutorials related to the IDE that they are using for developing AR experiences. Majority of the developers are trying out Unity and it is true that Unity has a steep learning curve. This problem has to be addressed separately and has no relation to the problem being addressed in this particular article.
🎯Define🎯
Although there are multiple problems to address and define on the basis of the responses I got, I am just sticking to one of them i.e user needs a systematic approach towards designing AR experiences.
Meet Developer Dave (I found a LinkedIn profile that resonates with this persona!)đź’ˇIdeateđź’ˇ
The first solution that comes to mind is writing a set of design guidelines based on years of research and past observations. Something similar to the Material Guidelines Documentation. A mix of theory and examples would be incredibly helpful.
There is a difference between watching a game-play video and actually playing it. Augmented Reality is pretty much the same. You have got to experience it to extract the fun out of it.
Keeping the above quote at the back of our minds, what if we could find a way to blend all the principles into a visual format, so that the user can read, observe and learn from the visual experience. How about a mobile application that contains all the experiences?
Let’s breakdown the parts of the story-boarding process behind the ARCore Elements app and build up on the idea above.
“Knowledge is captured in stories. Stories are the foundation of the process for examining a customer need and how they are behaving.” — Mark Zeh
Story-boarding plays a vital role in an AR experience. ARCore Elements include an engaging story arc and just the right amount of immersion required for any AR experience. It shows an adventurer stranded on an island named ARCore Elements who tries to navigate herself by jumping around on nearby islands to explore each of them. To me, the adventurer seems like a developer who is lost and trying to find her way to some treasure lying in one of the islands. The treasure being — the secrets of designing a great AR Experience✨.
Credits : Alone Part 2 by Alan WalkerSubtle use of the sounds such as waves falling on the shore of an island and chirping of birds gives the user a sense of actually being on an island, thereby increasing user immersion. The app contains the 3 crucial components — presence, immersion and engagement (collectively called PIE).
- Story Arc : The developer(user) starts off by placing an island at a distance and gets introduced to an adventurer. Let’s call her Adventurer Anna. A group of small islands containing UX guidelines is also in the scene. So there are UX Guideline islands, and there are smaller AR UX islands(let’s call them sub-ux). Look at the pic below for reference -
- Agency : Selecting a UX Guideline island shows smaller sub-ux islands as options to choose from. Each sub-ux island contains the guidelines supported with AR content.
- Sound Events : Winds, Waves, Birds, a unique sound for each island
- Movement Events : The user explores each UX Guideline Island and can move around in the scene to visualize the experience from all angles. Each sub-ux island has a collection of adventures.
I won’t dive into the details of the visual aesthetics part in detail but just want to mention that the careful selection of the colors in the application is a solid representation of Google’s brand colors i.e red, blue, green and yellow. The app uses those 4 colors to categorize the islands. There is so much to learn from this app. It even revamps the traditional menu into an AR styled menu i.e islands. Creativity at it’s peak!đźŚ
Trending AR VR Articles:
1. Five Augmented Reality Uses That Solve Real-Life Problems
2. Virtual Reality Headsets: What are the Options? Which is Right For You?
3. Augmented Reality Robotics
4. Infographic: The Future of Virtual Reality
📱Prototype📱
This section was inspired by a session called “Prototyping for AR” that was done in Apple’s WWDC. They developed a prototype called ToastAR — the world’s first AR toast (yes, the “toast” you had in breakfast) recognition and rating app. Do check it out if you get time.
Brace yourselves for the upcoming content!Presenting to you the low-tech traditional prototyping process where I used objects around me to create a really low fidelity prototype. It helped me visualize everything clearly before blindly jumping into the Unity IDE and playing around with 3D spheres and cubes.
Low Fidelity Prototype Visualization chartThe above low tech model aids in the development process. When designing 2D mobile applications and websites I use paper and sketch pens to develop low fidelity prototypes and Adobe XD for high fidelity prototypes. For Augmented Reality experiences, objects around me help most of the time to visualize what I have in my head. There are some amazing prototyping tools like Blender, Vectary and TorchAR which can be used to design rich virtual prototypes by placing 3D objects in the user’s environment, as well as, incorporate interactions. There are limitations though, which I am not diving into in this article. However, these tools do aid in the visualization process.
The next step is to develop the prototype in Unity IDE which will include user interactions, scene transitions, Anna’s exploration of the sub-ux islands and common UI elements. The development process will be covered in a separate article.
https://medium.com/media/4c909eb5a835dea8cfb51d2e5cadc24c/hrefđź“ťTestđź“ť
After having a well designed prototype ready, the app was developed and launched on Google Play to get more feedback from users. Currently, it has 100,000+ downloads and a 4.1 stars review. The app and the ARCore SDK is being updated regularly in order to study the users, understand the pain points and incorporate new features that can potentially improve the user experience. These factors will also contribute towards the improvement of the existing UX Design Guidelines with Google, which in turn help developers like Developer Dev to become better at designing great Augmented Reality Experiences. One day he will be able to design AR experiences as good as👇
I didn't NEED a refresh button but like... aNiMaTiONnNn #AugmentedReality #AR #XR #madewithunity https://t.co/6enw605zKs — @MatthewHallberg
✨Conclusion✨
The scope of UX Design in Augmented Reality is huge. AR Developers need a guideline as exhaustive as the Material Design Guidelines. It will take time and good amount of research to formulate such guidelines. We might be able to see something in the years to come.
đź‘€Side noteđź‘€
Interaction Design Foundation provides top quality online design courses in collaboration with top universities and companies. My yearly subscription for the Interaction Design Foundation (from where I have learnt UX Design) is ending soon. If you want to learn about UX Design then go ahead and enroll using my url. You will get 2 months free membership if you use my URL - https://www.interaction-design.org/invite?r=rajat-kumar-gupta.
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https://medium.com/media/1e1f2ee7654748bb938735cbca6f0fd3/hrefDeconstructing the Design Thinking Process behind Google’s ARCore Elements app 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.