We have created a museum (WESON_museum) on VRChat, and have been exhibiting the works of the painter (Tomoya Uemura) in several exhibitions from around March 2021. Currently, every Saturday from 21:00 to 22:00, we ourselves are in the hall to have guiding, and visitors are enjoying the art in VR museum.
The Asahi Shimbun which is one of the biggest Japanese newspaper covered it in newspapers and online articles. I really appreciated it.
Visualizing and properly assessing user experience (UX) design is an important process nowadays. In recent years, I think that it has become relatively possible to carry out UX evaluation of environmental conditions and architecture / space, which was difficult to evaluate before because of the spread of virtual reality (VR) devices such as Oculus products.
What we are doing is just 3DCG, however the work of creating a space like a museum virtually requires a more architectural perspective and the idea of space design.
When I decided to create a virtual museum, I literally went to see the real buildings and read photo books for reference. I don’t have modeling skills yet, therefore I support it by adding existing objects and editing them. However, when users visits with an avatar to our VR Museum, I have observed what type of space design makes it easy to see the work. During development, I realized that it was necessary to consider various factors such as whether or not, route guidance, and whether or not to get lost.
Everyone doesn’t try to touch the painting
It is forbidden to touch paintings in real-existing museums, but virtual museums allow it. However, what I found through the VR solo exhibition, nobody tries to touch the painting instead, just viewing the painting from a distance. It seems that people feel like visiting real-existing museum and behave in the same way.
In addition, if there is another person behind you, you might think, “Oh, I am blocking others’ view !” It behaves the same as a real-exisiting museum. Even if you overlap with other users each other, the avatar would be transparent, so you don’t block others’ view. It is interesting that users who even know this fact behave like a gentleman in VR world as well.
Museums often don’t allow photography especially in Japan, therefore users asked me
“Can I take a photo?”
There is no problem with photography in our VR museum. I put a sign saying “Photo OK!” at the entrance of the museum.
It is frequently said that VR is highly immersive, however immersiveness is already well-known facts. I think that it is late to recognize that immersiveness is only the strength of VR. You need to think about VR UX design beyond immersiveness.
Superiority of empirical information over visual information
The main building of WESON_museum which is currently being uploaded, has a transparent corridor at the entrance. Paintings are displayed on the left and right, and you can enter the building by going up the transparent spiral staircase.
In the beginning, I didn’t put invisible walls (collider) on the left and right of this corridor. The reason is that because this VR museum floats in the sky, so I thought it would be more interesting as an experience design, including the fact that it would possibly fall. However, it is difficult to climb the spiral staircase without collider. Then, I decided to put an invisible wall to prevent it from falling to the outside. Therefore, many users feel that transparent walls were installed in all parts of the world. A bunch of users approached to paintings to see closer and fell into the sky since there is no invisible walls on the corridor.
Before learning about the existence of transparent walls, a lot of users walked toward the center of the corridor so that they wouldn’t fall, and watched paintings from there, never approaching the edges. This is the same movement in real life.
However, when they learned that there was a transparent wall even in one place, it seemed that they misunderstood that the transparent walls were installed everywhere from the experience information. Users will not die even if it falls since this is a virtual world, but I learned a difference in behavior.
Currently, users will not fall because I put the transparent walls in all parts of the world to prevent it. However, it made me reconsider the importance of space design and virtual UIUX that match human behavioral psychology. This requires considering Comprehension,
“Did the user understand how real-world behavior is reflected in the virtual world?”
“Did the user use the controller to influence the virtual space?”
I think that these easiness would be required.
Conclusion
Humans rely on visual information for 94%. I thought that VR is the technology that mainly jacks human vision. But what I found is human behavioral psychology depends more on information gained from real-world experience than on things seen in VR.
Therefore, I think that the virtual space design should be more naturally closer to human behavioral psychology and cognition. You should read the book of UX creator Donald Norman. It is a must read as a designer.
VR UX should be designed to impress users “Feeling that you can do something” by closely following the behavior of humans in the real world, and needs expansion of cognition that could only be done in VR.
Since it is difficult to evaluate the perception of a three-dimensional space such as a virtual space without objectively looking at that space, another factors such as empirical information also affect behavior in addition to visual information.
Virtual reality allows you to do things that aren’t possible in reality. You can fly in the sky, shoot a beam, decorate your work in the air, look paintings in the rain, and so on. However, to trust users, you need to make sense in the virtual world. Cognitive distortion is not allowed.
We need a comprehensional law of what we can and cannot do in the world. The world without restrictions is attractive in VR, but by giving restrictions, it is possible to realize a design that is easier to understand.
I think it’s right to design based on or as an extension of the laws of the real world that users unconsciously understand. Consistency between the virtual world and the real world allows users to understand the virtual world more smoothly.
In the virtual world, the time when unreality becomes reality passes. As the user becomes part of the space or breathes in it, it is strongly affected by the phenomenon that occur in the space. In other words, it is necessary to try to understand the user’s values such as culture, experience, age, gender, identity, etc., and to match the values and design both physically and non-physically.
I would like to continue exploring design metaphors that are easy for a bunch of people to understand.
