- Case Study -
VIRTUAL REALITY CONTROLS
Interaction designers decide how and where visitors enter immersive virtual worlds. With ChemCrystals-VR, we arrive surrounded by giant levitating models of ionic compounds. This awe-inspiring virtual reality teaching and learning environment has a layout encouraging exploration on an easily navigated grid of recessed sandboxes.
Invented by a chemist in 1865, ball-and-stick models appeal to people with average spatial ability. Scaled monumentally in virtual reality, they appeal to everyone. Here, a unit cell's ground shadow depicts chirality. Model surfaces enhanced with a bump map adopt the CPK color scheme. Since the mid-twentieth century, space-filling models demonstrate the van der Waals radius, where intersecting spheres represent atoms. Unlike ball-and-stick models, they don't show a molecule's chemical bonds.
Easily controlled and navigated VR environments have predictable conditions and behaviors. In this prototype, blue text labels are two-dimensional, indicating they have no mass, and we can travel through them. Three-dimensional models are solid objects with collision detection enabled, so we must travel around them. Affordance is the key to immersive user interface design. Testing an interface is the key to user experience design.
Event triggers cause something to happen using a human interface device (HID) like the XBox controller that came with early Oculus Rift headsets. I surrounded interactive models with low-precision yellow pads, triggering pop-up media events on contact, like animated signs, live action holograms, voice-over, and sound effects. An early career in computer game design was my springboard for imagining human-computer interaction (HCI) for virtual and augmented reality.
Everything in the ChemCrystals-VR environment has a purpose. Palm trees are navigation aids, marking the four corners of each sandbox. Their shadows add definition to ramps and the elevated pathways between them. Nudge a levitating model, and it rotates. Details like these enrich virtual worlds where learners discover information and meaning in novel surroundings.
3D SCANNER
CGI STILL LIFE
THIS IS NOT A BRICK
BIOMIMETIC DEVICE
OPERATION ICE HOUSE
VIRTUAL RESORT
BOOK COVER
VIRTUAL REALITY CONTROLS
BOARD GAME
FRAME CONNECTOR
MONITOR TABLE
AUCTION PADDLE
BOXXER CONCEPT
IRONICAL MOUSETRAP
BOW CHAIR
ODS IMAGES & ANIMATION
PRINTABLE DWELLING
EXHIBIT DISPLAY
MONOLITHIC LOGO
RECEPTION DESK
FLOOR STAND
VAN DER ROHE CITY
CATTLE HERDER
Interaction designers decide how and where visitors enter immersive virtual worlds. With ChemCrystals-VR, we arrive surrounded by giant levitating models of ionic compounds. This awe-inspiring virtual reality teaching and learning environment has a layout encouraging exploration on an easily navigated grid of recessed sandboxes.
Invented by a chemist in 1865, ball-and-stick models appeal to people with average spatial ability. Scaled monumentally in virtual reality, they appeal to everyone. Here, a unit cell's ground shadow depicts chirality. Model surfaces enhanced with a bump map adopt the CPK color scheme. Since the mid-twentieth century, space-filling models demonstrate the van der Waals radius, where intersecting spheres represent atoms. Unlike ball-and-stick models, they don't show a molecule's chemical bonds.
Easily controlled and navigated VR environments have predictable conditions and behaviors. In this prototype, blue text labels are two-dimensional, indicating they have no mass, and we can travel through them. Three-dimensional models are solid objects with collision detection enabled, so we must travel around them. Affordance is the key to immersive user interface design. Testing an interface is the key to user experience design.
Event triggers cause something to happen using a human interface device (HID) like the XBox controller that came with early Oculus Rift headsets. I surrounded interactive models with low-precision yellow pads, triggering pop-up media events on contact, like animated signs, live action holograms, voice-over, and sound effects. An early career in computer game design was my springboard for imagining human-computer interaction (HCI) for virtual and augmented reality.
Everything in the ChemCrystals-VR environment has a purpose. Palm trees are navigation aids, marking the four corners of each sandbox. Their shadows add definition to ramps and the elevated pathways between them. Nudge a levitating model, and it rotates. Details like these enrich virtual worlds where learners discover information and meaning in novel surroundings.
Invented by a chemist in 1865, ball-and-stick models appeal to people with average spatial ability. Scaled monumentally in virtual reality, they appeal to everyone. Here, a unit cell's ground shadow depicts chirality. Model surfaces enhanced with a bump map adopt the CPK color scheme. Since the mid-twentieth century, space-filling models demonstrate the van der Waals radius, where intersecting spheres represent atoms. Unlike ball-and-stick models, they don't show a molecule's chemical bonds.
Easily controlled and navigated VR environments have predictable conditions and behaviors. In this prototype, blue text labels are two-dimensional, indicating they have no mass, and we can travel through them. Three-dimensional models are solid objects with collision detection enabled, so we must travel around them. Affordance is the key to immersive user interface design. Testing an interface is the key to user experience design.
Event triggers cause something to happen using a human interface device (HID) like the XBox controller that came with early Oculus Rift headsets. I surrounded interactive models with low-precision yellow pads, triggering pop-up media events on contact, like animated signs, live action holograms, voice-over, and sound effects. An early career in computer game design was my springboard for imagining human-computer interaction (HCI) for virtual and augmented reality.
Everything in the ChemCrystals-VR environment has a purpose. Palm trees are navigation aids, marking the four corners of each sandbox. Their shadows add definition to ramps and the elevated pathways between them. Nudge a levitating model, and it rotates. Details like these enrich virtual worlds where learners discover information and meaning in novel surroundings.
3D SCANNER
CGI STILL LIFE
THIS IS NOT A BRICK
BIOMIMETIC DEVICE
OPERATION ICE HOUSE
VIRTUAL RESORT
BOOK COVER
VIRTUAL REALITY CONTROLS
BOARD GAME
FRAME CONNECTOR
MONITOR TABLE
AUCTION PADDLE
BOXXER CONCEPT
IRONICAL MOUSETRAP
BOW CHAIR
ODS IMAGES & ANIMATION
PRINTABLE DWELLING
EXHIBIT DISPLAY
MONOLITHIC LOGO
RECEPTION DESK
FLOOR STAND
VAN DER ROHE CITY