Week two update:
This week we have spent our time conducting more research into the specific design questions we want to answer through our prototypes this semester. We all took the opportunity as the hardware came in, to play around with some existing multi-user VR experiences.
Rec Room, Facebook Spaces, Oculus Rooms, as well as games that simulate home/private spaces like Animal Crossing, Ultima Online, and Toontown.
From this research we distilled our design questions down into a couple topics:
Entry into space. Invitation:
- What reasons do you invite someone into your private space?
- Why do you invite people into your home?
- What are the implications of leaving gifts/messages for someone in a virtual space?
- What if someone’s “not at home” aka. not online/in the headset?
- Is there a physical action or ritual you need to perform to enter/exit the home space?
Shared attention:
- How do you entertain a guest in the VR space?
- What sorts of shared activities do you do with guests at home? (NOT gaming)
- How do you interact with another user?
- Speaking to each other over microphone is important in the home space.
- Embodiment is important – a lot of people are looking at embodiment in VR, but we just need to establish a usable level of it for our experience.
Curated space:
- How does a home space evolve over time?
- Breakable/steal-able objects?
- How do we lend the space permanence and value for a user?
- Activities in a home are often maintenance activities, how do we get those activities to hold meaning for a VR user?
In terms of housekeeping, we’ve been excited to try out the new Vive Pro headset that we got in. The depth cameras open up some interesting possibilities for our project and we’ve been considering using them for asymmetrical experiences (one person in a HMD, one out).
In addition to this, we’ve finally got access to a second room to have our second Vive setup so we can begin work on networking headsets. Our Tech Gold Spike is to use one of the summer rooms and put two users in the space.