Experiential Design for XR Systems: Driving User Efficiency and Engagement

The XR market is blooming with solutions for diverse domains and industries. With new hardware launches and technical advancements occurring daily, there's an increasing demand for higher content quality and visual fidelity, as well as more haptics and integration of the new features and functions for better user convenience and performance. While the design aspect of XR solutions continues to evolve, there's still ample room for improvement in crafting immersive XR products, and dedication to systemic thinking and using experiential design tools is crucial here. Lucid Reality Labs tracks the market's progress while developing our excellence in visual fidelity and design for impact, and here's what we see .

User experience (UX) plays a crucial role in XR experiences, affecting how fluent and confident users feel immersed in them. Hence, the Industry strives for consistency and natural interactions in solutions, carefully crafting essential components like intuitive consumer journey, smooth assistance and guidance, comfort of usage, nativity and clarity, haptic and tactile feedback, eye tracking that ensures personalization, response, and the most effective performance.

Lucid Reality Labs has identified several areas for development in current XR interfaces that can be addressed for more realistic and impeccable experiences. We emphasize consistency and natural interaction and eliminate the need for additional explanations, assistance, or additional feedback, which may detract users from the immersive experience. While some solutions still need to develop more in-depth and accurate haptic, tactile, and audio feedback to address users’ difficulties in understanding if they are performing tasks correctly. The whole Industry will benefit from and elevate the user experience in XR environments by creating more coherent and intuitive interfaces.

Overall, the XR Design System can be instrumental in accelerating the design process, reducing development time and cost, and ensuring consistent quality across different users and devices. While including interactions (like hand tracking or controller use), and already-mentioned feedback mechanisms can pave the way to design efficacy. Lastly, a system means adaptability and inclusion, aiming to make all the solutions developed within it adaptable to various devices, screen resolutions, and interaction models.

XR market players aiming at leadership foresee immense opportunities in considering all the technology's blockages and understanding the benefits they will offer, such as enhanced development process, impact measurement, and unique advantage on the market. Let's look at recent steps major companies have taken to move to better experiential design and enhanced features of their solutions and products.

Hand-Object Interactions Analysis. Meta engineers presented the HOT3D dataset , a tool designed to enhance understanding of how humans use their hands to interact with objects and communicate. This benchmark dataset is poised to unlock new opportunities in computer vision research, particularly in transferring manual skills from experts to less experienced users or robots, aiding AI assistants in understanding user actions and enabling innovative input methods for AR/VR users. Key Features of the HOT3D Dataset are comprehensive data collections, for example, 1+M multi-view frames of hand-object interactions, high-fidelity 3D models, advanced tracking capabilities, and APIs with code samples for accessing and visualizing image streams and high-quality 3D poses. These features collectively elevate development and provide invaluable insights. As a result, the HOT3D dataset is poised to become an essential resource for researchers and developers in the XR and AI fields, significantly advancing the realism and functionality of XR applications.

Tracking for Better Convenience. In the meantime, Apple introduced an upcoming visionOS 2 , a significant update to Apple Vision Pro that, among other offers, introduces a noteworthy way for users to create spatial content and enables intuitive hand gestures to access vital information at a glance quickly. visionOS 2 introduces a new spatial interface controlled by eyes, hands, and voice, making navigation on Apple Vision Pro faster and easier. New hand gestures provide quick access to features like Home View and Control Centre and allow actions like adjusting volume and viewing battery levels. Enhancements include higher resolution Mac Virtual Display, mouse support, and visibility of the Magic Keyboard even in immersive environments. Users can personalize Home View, use Travel Mode with new train support, and add Guest Users.

Foveated Rendering for High-End Graphics and Immersion. Varjo is committed to extremely realistic visual fidelity and full immersion into the headset user's experience. Therefore, they are actively working to combine Quad view, foveated rendering, and OpenXR. Foveated rendering is the technique of rendering graphics with the desired resolution that ideally matches the level of detail that the eye perceives. With high-resolution rendering focused on where the user is looking, the depth of detail and realism grows, boosting immersion in XR experiences.

Enhanced Functionality. The v67 update for Meta headsets introduces several new features and enhancements to make the user experience more convenient and smooth. Key updates on Quest 3 include users gaining a Wi-Fi QR Code Scanner feature for more accessible network connections, and immersive media continuity allows videos to be accessed without closing the current VR app. With this updates, Meta is experimenting with a window management solution that ensures convenience and nativity for users while all content transitions to 3D design. It is worth noting that this feature remains experimental.?

Read also: Alliancing for Ecosystem Competition: What Google and Magic Leap’s partnership can bring to the XR market?

Experiential design of the XR solutions that imply high-quality interactions and feedback are essential for a native and enjoyable user experience, and there are many more examples of how the market targets this excellence. Consideration of personal touchpoints, usage of additional devices, and various input methods enhances usability and user satisfaction. These insights highlight the importance of a well-designed XR system that prioritizes user experience, provides comprehensive feedback, and maintains adaptability and consistency across different platforms and devices. At Lucid Reality Labs , we prioritize visual fidelity as a strategic focus, recognizing it as a critical differentiator, and we are eager to share our approach and expertise in leveraging XR Design Systems to enhance visual fidelity and spatial user experience that can benefit industry standards.

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