What is a Designer in the Metaverse?
Response post to: This digital scholar breaks down what designers need to know about the Metaverse, by Lilly Smith.
Summary: Digital scholar Janet Murray breaks down how to design for the metaverse, how to prepare for it, and what to take with a grain of salt.
https://www.editorx.com/shaping-design/article/what-designers-need-to-know-about-the-metaverse
Designer, Metaverse, and Digital Scholar - already some buzzwords are flying around. Let's dive right in.
She's first asked to define metaverse.
I'll go with seeing a stronger blending of the computer world with reality than we see today. There is still a HUGE gap between the haves and have-nots when it comes to accessibility of all definitions. And it's not just physical or technological accessibility that I'm referring to. It's also the gap in understanding and processing information that the computer world provides (as evidenced by what seems to be a degrading ability for folks to reason and form logical arguments--see recent arguments in Instructional Design that Andragogy does not exist.)
But I still see so much action and ability as LIMITED. That is not to say that getting to full or complete immersion is the goal or to say that when we go fully into virtual reality we will have arrived at the metaverse (big m). What I'm talking about is natural interactions. I think the best analogy is from the movie The Time Machine 2002, the Library Scene. While I could have opinions on the display of the Librarian (hologram, 3D, spatial, tactile, whatever), those are far less important than the natural language processing (and please excuse the crude, but situational lamb joke) that the users have with the computer world.
To this day, I find that my interactions with computers still frustrate me with some basic things that I wished they could do but they cannot--like intuit what I want it to do when I've gone and pressed the wrong button. Or when I want it to complete what I feel is a very basic and common action but there is no such interface.
For example (and Developers: Heads-up, there is a huge gap for this). I want the ability to convert any digital object into an event. Calendars are well understood now. Alexa understands them. My phone understands them. It works well. I can ask for a timer, a stopwatch, a regularly recurring event, a one-time thing, or a 42 of something in the next 52 weeks. So the end goal is already there. What I need is is the ability to draw from the multilayered parts of my computer life and convert the cacophony into my Calendar.
So I need to be able to flag 2 Discord messages and put them on my to-do list for 2 days from now. I need to be able to take 3 emails and turn them into meetings (NO, that's NOT easy to do right now Microsoft and Google as much as you think you've already done that). I want to change a voice mail on my phone into a set call back reminder in the future. I need short, medium, and long term to-do lists and yes those are Calendar things. My metaverse understands that I blend my real life with my computer life as seamlessly as I move my hands. I need voice interaction that is natural language processing and I don't want it blocked while I am driving--that's often when I'd need help the most!
BTW side point: Why do Macs continue to outperform PCs on the 'Search this entire computer for a file with this word' function STILL in 2022? Why has Windows still failed on this? Macs do this search in seconds. PCs still take minutes AND you can't do anything else while it is searching or it cancels the search.
Another question from the article: Skills a Designer must learn, interviewee says Unity (the programming language).
Sigh. This goes back to "define designer". It seems like designer cannot be understood! There are camps that want to draw folks into being programmers - one must make things. But I reject that. One does not need to make things (indeed, I stop at storyboards). This is like saying that to be an instructional designer, one must make and remake Canvas or Blackboard everyday. That would sound insane to an ID today. They know all of the back doors to these programs but they would not rebuild it. Why? I agree. I don't see why someone with a solid ID background (ahem, I'm coming to that) would need to learn to make 3D objects.
The artist crowd would be happy to welcome in folks- make jewelry clothes, pretty spaces or inter-actionable objects (cough, Second Life all over again, cough). No, that's not the kind of designer I am either.
A few months ago, someone called Instructional Designers simply "Information Architects" (IAs).
Indeed, the ID field has become saturated with folks that know LMS' inside and out, but don't know a good theoretical decision if it came up and sat down next to them in a chair.
https://twitter.com/Heatherlovessci/status/1511057993529532424?s=20&t=ItCv7PCl0jb-yDDgYoucVQ
I work as a bridge between how people interact with virtual reality and how information (of all kinds, think the green display of the Matrix) is displayed. To me, XR is the Matrix. I see the underlying code and the code is HOW HUMANS interact with it, not WHAT it is.
Instructional Designers will need a new word in the Metaverse, a new career, a new job. Just like Neo learned that it was not the code, not the spoon, but he could work up and over the code, work beyond the spoon, I work with the essentialness of how the humans interact with the computer space.
For example, is it REALLY important that a VR class is held here or there or that a student arrive flying or in a boat or whatever? NO. That is not important.
Is it important that a student feel valued and special in the learning process? Should they be expected and held to high expectations? Should they be led by someone who has the best ideals for them? YES!
That is what THIS video relayed as the FEELING. The visuals and sound are merely the packaging.
This is the goal that I work towards.