The Challenges of Being a VR Product Designer

When I joined Meta/Reality Labs, in 2019, I had no prior experience in designing experiences for virtual reality.

In this writing, I'll outline my experience, aspects to consider, and challenges you may face when designing virtual reality experiences.

Problem solving

In the first months after I joined, when I slowly became less anxious about 2D vs. 3D and started to ground myself on the design problems the team was facing, I realized that it wasn't a 100% brand new world.

Designers most likely have spatial or multi-dimensional problems in the past. Think back to when you solved a problem at your home, which is, inherently, a multi-dimensional design problem.

When you focus on solving the problems you face, with the resources you have, you will be able to adapt to the jargon and tooling necessary to craft and communicate your solutions. It will be slower and challenging at first, and that's part of learning new things and growing.

Spatial Interfaces

Thinking about dimensions — as in 2D vs. 3D — can be a practical way to think about the differences and how the scope of the design work changes. A better way to think about it is through the lens of spatial interfaces.

Spatial interfaces offer a less prescriptive way to start thinking about solutions. Figma, as an example, is primarily a 2D panel app, but it affords the sense of space and presence through the live cursor metaphor, or it affords the sense of location when you drop a comment pin.

Form in VR

Christopher Alexander, in his book “Notes on the synthesis of form,” puts it quite nicely:

"The greatest gift of a designer is his intuitive ability to organize form. Today these have been reduced to tasks on a todo list." — Christopher Alexander

Virtual reality experiences can be slower to design and build. A lot of foundations still need to be thought through and build. This afford designers an opportunity to detach from existing patterns, trends, and recipes, going deeper into problem-solving.

Interfaces in a 3D space won't ever be "perfect" on all sides or in all viewing angles, and, as mobile was ten years ago, we're just starting to define patterns and concepts that "feel right".

The VR Archetype

Based on my experience, I believe the VR Product Designer designer should be a mix of Architect, UX Designer, and Science Fiction Writer:

• Architects — Understand how to create spatial experiences where people can interact, integrate and be present with each other.
• UX designer — Usability, accessibility, and efficient task completion are essential aspects of any experience.
• Science fiction writer — Without the boundaries of our physical reality or existing interfaces, there is additional freedom to imagine and communicate new metaphors, worlds, and concepts.

Given the experience of designing spatial interfaces and fiction, game designers may be in a good position to design for VR. At the same time, games tend to have a very different objective than operational systems or utility apps.

When thinking about general computing and software, high efficiency and accessibility are desirable. These are not aspects that most games optimize for, even though it is slowly getting better.

The challenges of tooling

Today, it is easy and efficient for mobile or desktop software designers to draft and try different solutions for a problem and test it on the device that it exists. Tools like Figma Mirror enable that.

That wasn't always the case and mobile designers had to export images from Photoshop and send them to our mobile devices via email.

The tools for designing for and in VR are still in their infancy and, in some ways, they remind me of the early days of designing for mobile.

The landscape today is composed of inefficient custom tools or game engines like Unity, where the learning curve can be steep, and support for macOS computers is not a priority. This Wall of Pain does a great job of capturing how it feels.

With that, it becomes a lot more efficient to think and design for the VR with simulations (like on Figma) and then transpose to the medium (VR headset, for instance) by partnering with a Prototyper. Storyboarding is a good alternative to visualizing and communicating solutions, building alignment before going into the process of prototyping or development of a feature.

Engineering branches (that usually come with screenshots and videos) and manually loading builds into a headset are common ways we use today for understanding the state and quality of a feature in development.

Where to start and resources

By being curious and even obsessing about it for a period. Personally, I love this initial period of immersion where I can feel that I'm learning a lot every week.

Here are some resources that were useful to me:

• The Spatial Software and Interface essays by John Palmer are an excellent primer for how to think about spatial design, or you can check the Figma conference presentation if you prefer something on video.
• Matt Schaefer's primer on Designing in VR highlights some of the challenges and shows practical examples around process and experimentation that are a great starting point.
• Ryan Singer's primer on the work of Christopher Alexander is inspiring and has some practical examples on how to apply to software development.