Why designing realistic yet true-to-form personas presents an interesting set of social challanges
But designing realistic yet true-to-form personas presents an interesting set of social challanges
Designers iterate, then they iterate, then…they iterate. However, one of the big challenges that VR designers face is putting the reality into virtual reality. One company taking steps to humanize the VR experience is AltspaceVR. The service is a social platform for virtual reality where users can hang out, attend events, play games and share experiences with people in a virtual space reality.
As a social site its mission is to enable natural communication online, where talking to another person in VR can feel like being together in the same place. The site claims to provide the most complete, effective, and fun way for people to be together when they are not in the same physical space.
Yet, having realistic and relatable avatars is central to this vision. every user should be able to find avatars to represent themselves, and also be exposed to other users’ avatars that they enjoy communicating with. For AltspaceVR, its new avatars are a big step toward realizing that mission.
Designing for humans in VR is tough. Tony Sheng from the product team writes,
“The balance of detail and animation has to be perfect. Show too much detail on the avatar without enough animation and it feels like a mannequin. Don’t show enough and it doesn’t feel human. We iterated on many different concepts before landing on these two models for our initial release.”
The platform is now used by people in over 50 countries. If the platform truly aims to share a variety of experiences and interact in the most natural and fulfilling way possible online, it better design product with diversity in mind. It’s essential to add variety to give people options in how they identify and, in turn, how they are represented.
The company did just that — unrolling a number of human avatars. Each human avatar launches with five hair styles, three skin tones, and three shirt styles, totalling 90 human variants. However, just as diverse emojis have both improved communication, they’ve also introduced problems in how we communicate with others. Could diverse avatars bring a new set of challenges to a free-for-all VR environment?
AltspaceVR is working proactively to create avatar diversity and it’s just the beginning. After all, this is a community; will community standards arise as a result of creating these human avatars? This begs the question, what social norms might be associated with VR worlds? The tech industry should take note of how community and diversity are interconnected. All of this activity signifies that the medium is gaining steadier footing and will undoubtedly touch parts of our lives in the near future.
So, what will your avatar look like?
Originally published at www.psfk.com on January 12, 2016.