Virtual Reality in spite of its brilliant success as a newest tech product has encountered reviews about sickness and nausea faced by users after continual use of VR devices with respective applications. Now, a technology as great as VR cannot be ruled out because it makes the users puke which could either be due to a fault in the hardware of the device but in most cases it is due to ill designed applications which lack the basic designing principles for VR. Virtual Reality being a new genre for designers might have caused certain issues to go overlooked however, after careful analysis of what we know so far we have put together a set of guidelines to be followed while UX designing for VR.
A neat UI/UX Design: While designing the UI of a VR application one must make sure so as to not place any controls on the periphery of the user’s vision as the vision gets blurry towards the edges and rotating your head every time to view a control can cause sickness.
Users view through the Camera: Users must feel connected with the visuals of the camera and they must be able to look around just like they do in real life which is why such designing principles must be adopted for creating applications for a HMD VR.
Teleportation might just work for VR: Experiencing VR experiences which involve walking around or running while sitting in a couch i.e. while your body is stationary is bound to make you feel sick. Thus, as a designer consider, you must teleportation because the sudden change in environment can cause confusion therefore, induce fade in and fade out effects.
Allow time for users to Orient themselves: Let the users explore and get accustomed to the new environment that they are in and get familiar with their surroundings.
Maintain Constant rate of Speed: A mismatch between the virtual surroundings and your senses is likely to cause a sensory conflict. For instance, if you are sitting in a chair while your VR avatar is running it will surely pull the right strings for nausea. Thus, maintain a constant speed through the experience.
In the end, make sure to test your application UX designs for VR on innocent and unfamiliar subjects so as to get a clear understanding of the application’s susceptibility.
