Why VR is not a website

- Virtual reality is still a relatively new technology that's attracting designers from other areas, such as 3D modeling and web design. However, virtual reality is not a website. Let's talk about why that is. I'm going to walk you through a few key differences in designing for VR compared to web design. Let's start with sketching, often a very preliminary stage in any design workflow. Here's a typical standard wireframe sketch for web design that illustrates a page layout. Now compare that with the 3D VR sketch intended to illustrate an immersive environment. Even at this preliminary stage, using a completely 3D design template, both illustrates and reminds your team that the user will be experiencing a fully immersive 3D environment. Prototyping is another preliminary design stage that can be quite different for VR. For web design, we typically create some sort of paper prototype to engage users in providing us with feedback about our 2D design. However, in VR design, we might need something more tangible in 3D, like Play-Doh or Legos, to help us with the preliminary prototyping stage. Lego and Play-Doh maintain that 3D spatial aspect that is very different in virtual reality. Using these tools for prototyping allow the user to better imagine the immersive and spatial world that we're creating for them. For example, in this video, the user is doing a talk-aloud session with the designer regarding the components available in this environment. The users are already providing valuable feedback about their expectations and some confusion about the scenario. Because the prototype is interactive and represents a 3D environment, the designer is getting perfect feedback from the user. Another way in which web and VR design differ is in navigational architecture. In web design, we have specific standards about dropdown menus, top navigation, pop-up windows, hyperlinks, mouseovers, all of which are common and expected. However, as we move into VR design, we need to let go of these standard web design structures as they're not the most useful and effective way for a user to navigate an immersive design. For example, this is the front end navigation for Nature Treks VR, and you can see here that there are no lists or pull-down menus, but rather the user moves their head to look around at different windows or options. They then use a controller to reach toward and select a particular image in order to navigate to or choose that level. This is a beautiful and intuitive example of how in virtual reality we often don't need lists or menus to make a selection. Rather, we can use our arms, heads, or positioning to make selections. Finally, unlike a webpage where a mouse or trackpad is how the user selects objects, in VR we now have an almost unlimited ability to design unique interactions using controllers or even engaging the user's hands to grab, point, touch, and carry objects. VR design is incredibly unique and requires us to continually remember that we're designing for an immersive and 360-degree setting. This is very different from web design and offers us incredible potential for creatively meeting the needs of our users.