Mixed Reality Check: Research into MR design process.
A year ago, I was part of a design team creating a Mixed Reality (MR) application. We were swamped by the sheer number of factors we needed to juggle. I desperately needed a holistic view of the Mixed Reality design process — what really mattered? But there was none. Online resources were packed with aesthetic prototypes, but not a single outline of team collaboration. So, I decided to dive in and research it myself.
Over the next few months, I interviewed many experienced Mixed Reality designers from the industry’s giants and analyzed insights from publications by academic and industry-based MR researchers.
My mission? — To understand the challenges crippling MR design teams.
The journey was an eye-opening experience. I spoke to the best of the best in the industry and collected more than 600 insightful quotes. Through qualitative research methods, I condensed the insights into six underlying challenges that cover almost all issues found with the current design process for Mixed Reality.
Findings: The challenges
CHALLENGE 1 - Iteration after technical implementation
The need for iterative process comes naturally with a medium this new. To allow for iteration, designers need means of verifying their ideas without large investments into development. In MR however, testing a low-fidelity prototype cannot reveal some types of issues, complicating the process further down the road.
Fast-growing tools like Bezi or ShapesXR are building their case around solving this problem and are being widely adopted. Yet, the current prototype fidelity often limits their effectiveness in uncovering design issues.
CHALLENGE 2 - Working in a 3D-mediated space
This is a challenge of thinking, designing, and communicating „in 3D“. The challenge seems the be mostly caused by deeply rooted habits of designers who are transitioning from 2D and the lack of established practices.
This challenge is found to be especially urgent in team environments, where shared thinking and communicating (Shared Mental Models) are crucial for the integration of knowledge (described further in Challenge 4).
CHALLENGE 3 - Understanding affordances and constraints
MR offers a vast array of possibilities, but it also comes with unique limitations. Designers need to understand how to harness these opportunities while overcoming challenges like motion sickness and hardware restrictions.
Cecilia Uhr — Co-founder of Bezi — in her keynote at Config also reflected on this issue: „Designers face more variables for 3D apps and games“.
CHALLENGE 4 - Designing with human factors and user maturity in mind
One of the interviewees mentioned that when comparing MR to 2D media “human-centred design is playing the even more important role here“. This has been a common thread throughout my interviews. Aspects of user-centred design — particularly those that we are not used to from 2D media — need careful attention. These include aspects like personal space, user onboarding, motion sickness, varying user maturity, locomotion and many more.
CHALLENGE 5 - Team composition and knowledge integration
„More variables“ in the design process create a need for wider knowledge on the team. This creates wider knowledge gaps and a need to bridge them. The issue of composing a team with the correct skills, knowledge and abilities is a challenge for MR design teams. Further integrating that knowledge is then equally tricky.
CHALLENGE 6 - Managing complexity consciously
Given the high medium complexity, teams naturally try to find ways to keep it manageable. That in itself is a good step unless done subconsciously. When a team simplifies the scope to manage complexity, they need to be aware of what they are leaving out. — In my study, designers reported that this simplification is done subconsciously both on the individual and the team level.
How should teams deal with these challenges?
This might all sound a bit too overwhelming, but remember, different teams face different challenges and the real trouble starts when those challenges go unnoticed. So the most important step is to identify the roadblocks your team is facing. To help you do that, the study introduces a „Mixed Reality Checklist“.
This checklist is a tool that helps you kickstart reflective team discussions through precisely placed thought-provoking questions.
Stepping back, XR technologies are reaching the plateau of productivity. It’s about time we focus on the design of the content. But when we do that, we face the challenges caused by the neglect of design research in academia and practice. My study aims to shift the focus back to design and drive improvement in team collaboration.
The findings are described in more detail and supported by data in the publication itself.
Referenced study:
Ševčík, M. (2024). Mixed Reality Check: Overview of Challenges in the Team Design Process for Mixed Reality. Bachelor’s thesis, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University. Retrieved from https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202407145104 Copyright 2024 by KONE Corporation
