Opening Media in Virtual Environments

An aspect that i focused on was transitions between environments or ‘apps’. I approached this initially by look at the media browser and how users would open photos and videos. Looking at other VR games and demos, the seem to use a fade-to-black transition – i feel like this would be a solution to transitions between scenes, but i feel like it’s a rather cheap solution to a critical problem in virtual environments and it also diminishes the feeling of immersion.

I took a step back and looked at interactions within the real world, mobile design and game design. I analysed three particular interactions, one within each environment and use this to drive the design of the virtual interaction.

Pinch to zoom was introduced in mobile as a way to navigated the small, but pixel-dense displays on mobile devices. By zooming, the user can see more detail in images or text. This interaction works well, potential due to the wide use of this interaction, but it would only work within a 2Dimensional environment as in real life we stretch objects to make them bigger, which would give us more detail.

I wanted to create a completely alien experience while using interactions that users are relatively familiar  with. I developed this idea of opening a sphere by pinching each side and pulling it outwards towards yourself. Since the user is familiar with the spatial destination, the teleporting of space is relatively clean and seamless.