Getting Started in WebXR

 

Mozilla Hubs put out their social media this week for the article I wrote "Bringing Learners into the Immersive Web: How to Begin" where I described the new user orientation space built by NYU Langone Medical School.

It was a great example of helping users get started on the basics of entering and moving in WebXR. Their users were in VR headsets but the instructions also apply to WebXR users for the most part.

The first draft of the article, however, had another focus that doesn't show up in the final version: the tour that Greg and Kristen took us on and how that tour fit into the Friday Community Meetups hosted by Mozilla Hubs. Matt Cool and I decided that that focus could go into another future article.

Looking back on the article now since it's been a couple of weeks since the experience and writing the article, I find the topic very dry.

I've engaged in a short conversation - that I'm writing up - about the use of virtual reality offices and what those will be in the future. A Facebook community member bemoaned that Meta showed work meetings happening in work meeting offices. 

 

 

 

 She wanted meetings to be held in volcanoes-- which brings up a regular decry when something in VR looks new-- there will be those who say it's NOT cool enough. So I went on to explain to her that starting in VR in known spaces like rooms with floors, ceilings, doors, and windows is, IMO, a better idea as it keeps apprehensive (or READ BUSINESS) users comfortable.  With the 'replication of reality' of those spaces, users just behave better, then tend to NOT walk into walls, etc. Believe me, that is very important - proper real world behaviors are expected in virtual reality-  because trying to go back in time and remind men that they should not speak openly and derogatorily about women's avatar bodies is a really hard Pandora's box to close.


Then this week, Ford Motor Company just opened their IMG DEI Museum in FrameVR and I took a quick tour. Here are some photos from the space:

Video of the first few seconds being in the Ford IMG DEI space (no sound, 25 seconds)

Right off the bat, I liked how they were taking care of what could be first-time-ever XR users.

They had VERY simple instructions:

1. Click this link.

2. An image of the buttons and mouse to use.

3. A first-person (first-avatar) point of view video of what looking at and entering the Museum looked like, including the 'floating feeling' of movement.

*Note: there is NO acknowledgement or use of avatars in this experience.  So it's a great example of #MetaverseWithNoAvatars.  You don't (and can't) look down at your avatar body.

So two different WebXR experiences with two different orientations or Getting Started experiences.

Technically, I prefer the video approach from Ford over the how-to from NYU. Even though NYU did have this very cute Alice in Wonderland-style of instructions that SHOULD be emulated, (Click me, Watch me),

 

 

the show 'em what you'll show 'em style of a quick video (it was 21seconds and could have been shorter!) of Ford's experience nails the quick intro experience WHILE still taking advantage of the XR space.  (READ: YOU SEE AND THEN YOU DO, there are no other choices.)

It was nice to compare 2 entry experiences so closely together in time. I'm reminded of a recent quote:

 

"Design as if it [the technology] were something speaking to the learner."
~Donald Clark with John Helmer, The Learning Hack podcast, S1E5 Online Educators.

The video - especially from the eye-viewpoint of the entering avatar nails the intro. Perfect.