Role Solo project _____________________________ Tool 360° Sketching, Storyboard, CoSpaces
TL;DR
Happy Garden
The VR space where you can gather with your friends and family to create meaningful memories by cultivating the garden together.
Overview
Background
After the pandemic, it has become challenging for people to meet their loved ones with long-distance. People can call to hear voices and to see the faces of their loved ones through video/voice calls, but these technologies cannot offer a true sense of being together. I wanted to explore how VR could be used to tackle this issue to give immersive experiences for people to meet each other in a virtual space.
"How might VR be able to help people with long-distance have a sense of being together by providing immersive experiences?"
Design Process
"How might VR be able to help people with long-distance meet in a virtual space to have a sense of being together by having immersive experiences?"
User Research
Research Insights
"It would be nice to have a personal place for people who want to hang around regularly in VR space. It would feel like I have another home in the VR space."
"It would be nice to have activities for people to do together in VR space. VR can make people with long-distance have a feeling of being together by doing activities together."
Solution
Design Opportunity
Ownership of the space: Provide a shared space that won’t be gone even after users stop playing the game so that the users can revisit this shared space whenever they want to, which will give a sense of true ownership for the space in VR and build the love of their virtual shared space.
An activity with a shared goal: People with long-distance can talk over the phone, but only VR can give them a true feeling of being together by enabling them to do an activity together in an immersive environment.
Design
360° Sketching and Storyboarding
Using my research and design requirements as a guide, I drew ideas for a VR environment and interactions.
I then played out a 360° sketch in order to see what the environment would look like in VR and added some potential places for interactions.
Finally, I sketched out various scenes and storyboards and then started to think about interactions of this game that could be prototyped for a usability test.
Six Interaction Goals
Choose what to sow or plant.
Water and fertilze garden plants
Work together while gardening
Harvest produces from plants
Sell produces to buy more plants
Get notifications on the phone
Users can choose what to sow or plant.
Users work together while gardening. For example, while one user plants something on the ground, the other user waters that plant.
Users can observe plants have grown bigger every time they revisit the space.
Users can harvest produces from whatever they planted.
Users can sell produces from the garden to buy more plants.
Users will get notifications on the phone when the garden needs attention (e.g., a plant needs water)
Paper Prototype
Lessons learned from the usability testing...
The paper prototype is super helpful to identify needed action items in an earlier stage.
Indications in the map really helped the user know what to do next.
The task completion indicator was unclear (e.g., is the water indication bar representing how much water the plant is needed or how much water the plant has?).
After getting out of the seed house, the user was confused about what to do next (= more wayfindings, and indications are needed).
Sound is critical for the users to have truly immersive experiences in the VR space. And also, the sound is a great way to give interaciton feedback to the users.
Try Out The Happy Garden!
Reflection
Takeaways
The process of converging UX design and VR technology together was challenging since I had never thought about user experiences in 3D space before. It was tough to picture user experiences in a 360° environment, but drawing a 360° sketch really helped me plan all the needed interactions and the concrete storyline for users. When building user interactions in the game, I needed to consider user experiences of visual and auditory elements in every interaction between users and the environment. I learned that providing adequate sound effects is crucial to conveying truly immersive experiences for users.
In addition, creating a paper prototype was easy and the fastest way to make users get involved during the development. The usability testing with the paper prototype was very helpful for gaining valuable insights in an earlier stage of the development. I used CoSpaces to develop my game, as it was much faster for me to add components and create interactions, but it could have been better to build the game with Unity. I am excited to improve my design and engineering skills within this space, so my next journey for this project will be making the Happy Garden with Unity.
