Engineering techniques to prevent typical design faults in user experience
In the world of augmented reality (AR), creating intuitive and engaging experiences is key to success. Heuristics, guiding principles for design, provide a valuable framework for AR designers to ensure their creations are user-friendly and effective.
Heuristics are not a new concept, with their origins traceable to the Nielsen Heuristics, a set of usability principles for web design. In the context of AR, these principles have been adapted to address the unique challenges and user experience considerations of AR environments.
Audrey Labrie and Jinghui Cheng, two renowned AR designers, have been at the forefront of this adaptation. Their work focuses on tailoring traditional usability heuristics to better fit AR applications. While their exact list may vary, common elements in AR heuristic adaptations include:
- Spatial Consistency: Ensuring virtual elements are consistently anchored in a spatial context relative to the real world, avoiding jitters or misplacements.
- Natural Interaction: Supporting intuitive and natural user interactions that leverage AR capabilities like gesture, gaze, and voice, while minimizing complex controls.
- Context Awareness: Providing feedback and system behavior that adapts according to the user’s real-world environment and context.
- Visibility of System Status: Clearly communicating what the AR system is doing, including loading status or tracking quality.
- Error Prevention and Recovery: Designing interfaces that prevent errors in manipulating virtual objects and offer easy ways to undo or correct mistakes.
- Match Between Virtual and Real: Aligning the virtual content's appearance and behavior with real-world expectations to avoid confusion.
- Minimalist Design: Avoiding clutter in the AR scene to reduce cognitive load and frustration.
- User Control and Freedom: Allowing users to easily exit or change AR modes and interactions without feeling stuck.
These heuristics can be used to evaluate and improve AR apps using a "AR Heuristic Scorecard". They offer a tried and true method for evaluating AR designs before user testing, helping designers avoid wasting time and money on designs with obvious UX errors or easily avoidable issues.
Google, a tech giant, is leveraging AR to enhance its services, such as Google Maps, and has plans for AR and VR. While not explicitly mentioned as using these heuristics, the principles are applicable to Google's AR endeavours.
Frank Spillers, an accomplished AR designer and the founder of award-winning UX consultancy Experience Dynamics, emphasizes the importance of using AR heuristics. By identifying common pitfalls and eliminating ideas that may not be user-friendly before prototyping, designers can create more effective and engaging AR experiences.
Heuristics also provide guidance for improving existing designs, ensuring each iteration moves closer to a user-friendly interface. For instance, the Help and documentation heuristic states that a system should have a brief tutorial for first-time users, particularly regarding surface detection and translating and rotating objects. The Error prevention heuristic suggests possible errors, such as placing or deleting an object by mistake, should be prevented by asking for confirmation for these actions.
In conclusion, heuristics are a valuable tool for AR designers, offering a framework for creating intuitive, user-friendly, and engaging AR experiences. By adhering to these principles, designers can ensure their creations are not only functional but also enjoyable for users.
- Not limited to AR, heuristics, originally from the Nielsen Heuristics, are also applicable to UI design in the home-and-garden lifestyle sector, ensuring intuitive and user-friendly interfaces for smart home appliances.
- In the field of educational technology, online education platforms can employ heuristics to enhance the learning experience, making navigation easier, reducing confusion, and promoting sustainable-living curriculums.
- Data-and-cloud-computing solutions may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about heuristics, but their inclusion can help in designing interactive dashboards and user-friendly data visualizations.
- Although not directly tied to the user experience, heuristics can be helpful to sustainability advocates promoting lifestyle changes and eco-friendly solutions through technology and education-and-self-development resources by ensuring user-friendliness for optimal engagement.
- As AR and VR technologies continue to expand into various aspects of daily life, from learning to entertainment and home-and-garden applications, heuristics will remain indispensable in creating user-centric, intuitive, and engaging interfaces for diverse users and contexts.
