4.Case Study
Virtual reality
What we conventionally used to call design disciplines are not longer existing. Design has experience an extensive growth after the Internet starting from 1996.
Usual design problems are now supported by powerful software that simulates environment, layout, colours. Software in general became a mean to an outcome like a product or a service.
Design in the last 20 years has reached a different maturity and it is now considered a good part of the success for business. I would like to explore the design used in virtual reality.
Researching on this topic I have concluded that it is interesting to see how virtual reality has followed a technology opportunity and we are experiencing the cusp of a design specialisation that goes behind user experience and interaction design. Virtual reality was invented long ago but never got popular for costs and tech limitations but also a lack of a meaningful use of it. These part of a bigger puzzle makes VR really interesting as unique marker in tracking evolution of design disciplines from their very beginning
Kain Tietzel
CEO at Start beyond
Design has reached a whole new level of maturity in the last 20 years. In fact digital was the catalyst for an overdue reconsideration of the importance of design and its disciplines. Digital not only boosted design sensibility for products and services but also dissolved conceptual boundaries. Therefore designers became from a discipline base to a problem-base or to project focused experts. This idea of a fluid design discipline led me to consider virtual reality one of the next catalyst for new creative needs, cross-disciplinary and highly technical. Looking at the history of virtual reality it’s easy to understand that there were many attempts to recreate an artificial experience mimicking the reality. There was this intuition of tricking or brain and sight to something that wasn’t real since 14th Century through the European Renaissance. Morton Heilig imagined in the early 50s an "Experience Theatre" that would entertain all the senses in an effective manner. He built a prototype called Sensorama in 1962. Ivan Sutherland Bob Sproull created in 1968 the first VR / AR head mounted display (Sword of Damocles) that was connected to a computer and not a camera. In 1993 Sega planned to release an headset with LCD screens and stereo sound for one of of their gaming console. Due to high costs in production Sega never launched this product. The main event that changes forever the VR market was a young man named Palmer Lucky that I also contacted via LinkedIn but obviously too wealthy to answer.
This man had the intuition of producing and headset called Oculus. He didn’t have the money and he kickstarted it receiving 2.5 million. Facebook later bought his company. In my research and quest for the catalyst of a new revolution that creates a design discipline or a as mentioned a design specialisation was the Oculus. To represent this moment in history I chose to design an infographic with active links that from one side explains few key moment in the world of VR and from another angle showing the evolution of the headsets. This infographic is designed using Adobe Animate. The old Flash. It was more than 15 years I haven’t coded but in this journey I dusted off my actionscript skills and created some basic movements and interactions.I start by sketching an idea of multiple paths for the user to explore. The metaphor is pretty basic. The door or doors represent the entrance to VR and the headset will reveal a bit of history about the tech available to enable VR.
I have met Kain in 2016 while working fo the R&D department of Canon Australia. We met because he was really passionate about his startup about VR that we wanted to find a way to collaborate. What impressed me the most about Kain was his passion about VR and his ideas. In the screenshot below there are the questions I asked him
1.Why VR? What were the mental steps that you took to rationalise this was the path you wanted to take? VR technology was close to a maturity point and one day I tried the Samsung Gear VR headset and I fall in love for it. In 2015 I initially planned to run a podcast about VR, a that moment we had all the necessary skills to deliver something extraordinary. We had video production and agency background.
2.How Start beyond is different from the competitors and how did you build that trust using narrative? Narrative is the core differentiator but also production and post production is very important. We managed to get appointed to deliver a VR project for an high profile real estate company. We delivered Edge28, it was fun and it definitely made an impact in the market. Qantas was another client we had the opportunity to work with, we gain a lot of credibility by delivering honest and quality work.
3. Do you think VR will push the need to have a design discipline specialised in this field in order to create the next level of VR experience? Absolutely! VR and AR are very technical and elaborated piece of work that needs a lot of specialised knowledge. It’s not only about interaction design, it is also about creating a narrative that let the user be immerse in the experience.
4. How do you leverage narrative to build brand equity? We decided to focus on delivering quality work, that’s still the strategy. We want to be proud of our work
Animation
For the animation I have chosen to use multiple software like Animate, Media Encoder, Character Animate, Photoshop.
The idea I had is to represent the key differentiator for Start beyond and use a metaphor of narrative with a twist. In fact the main character is represented by a bot walking into a gallery and watching different use of the headset and noticing people reaction to it.
Virtual reality is powerful and the bot struggle to understand where reality ends and the virtual dimension begin.
The end is showing who is behind the bot, looking it back to what was an animated representation of the a gallery was instead someone enjoying a virtual reality.
Face mapping in the last frames also imply that the bot was really moving his eyes looking around in the immersive tour.
