VR Interface Mock-Ups

Interface mock-ups elevate conceptual design to the next level above text-only design documents. They don't try to represent everything visually, just the elements a designer feels might be difficult to imagine with verbal descriptions alone.

Storyboards are the simplest and fastest way to make interface mock-ups. Storyboards are common in computer games, movies and television. Storyboard artwork follows no established norms. Styles range from stick figures and wire frames drawn in pencil to pen-and-ink comic book panels, to photographs of ready-made objects. Computer models are used in storyboards with 3D renderings representing control interface devices and other objects. 3D sketches created in virtual reality are also possible, like the image above made with Oculus Medium.

Virtual reality experiences are well suited to storyboard mock-ups. Narrative-of-place refers to a player's unscripted physical and temporal freedom to move about and examine a VR scene in contrast to traditionally scripted, linear narratives. The concept emerged some twenty years ago with early first person P.O.V. computer game interfaces. Narrative-of-place storyboards can represent anything a player sees and interacts with in a VR world-space. A person wearing a VR headset controls a virtual camera with their head movement, seeing in their headset what the camera sees in the virtual world. With game engines like Unity, this person is called the player, whether it's a game experience or not.

Some VR interactive controls are easily represented in a storyboard such as human-scale switches and levers, doors and windows and other devices that convey their functionality through their position and appearance. Complex VR control interfaces need instructions like the palette-and-brush UI in Oculus Medium. Interface mock-ups can work like step-by-step illustrated user guides or instructions. Whatever your approach, continue iterating UI concept designs with interface mock-ups until nothing else can be learned without commiting resources to a functional VR prototype.

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