How do you prototype for VR audiences?

2 Choose your VR prototyping tools

Depending on your budget, time, and skills, you can select from a wide variety of VR prototyping tools to create and test your VR experience. Unity is a powerful game engine that allows you to craft immersive VR experiences with 3D graphics, animations, sounds, and interactions. Alternatively, Unreal Engine is another game engine that offers high-quality VR experiences with realistic graphics, physics, and lighting. Sketchfab is a web-based platform that lets you upload and view 3D models in VR. Additionally, A-Frame is a web framework that enables you to create VR experiences using HTML and JavaScript. You can use any of these tools to prototype your VR environment and assets, interface and interactions, and share them with your audience online.

3 Create your VR prototype

Once you have chosen your VR prototyping tools, you can begin creating a simplified version of your VR experience that focuses on the core features and functions. You can use different levels of fidelity for your VR prototype, such as paper prototype - which uses sketches, drawings, or mockups to represent your VR environment and interface - to test your concept and layout; digital prototype - which uses 3D models, textures, sounds, and basic interactions to simulate your VR environment and interface - to test aesthetics and usability; or interactive prototype - which uses realistic graphics, animations, sounds, and advanced interactions to emulate your VR environment and interface - to test immersion and performance. Through these prototypes, you can get feedback from your VR audience and refine your VR design.

4 Test your VR prototype

Once your VR prototype is completed, it's important to test it with your VR audience. Testing your VR prototype will help evaluate the design, identify problems, and collect feedback. To do this, you can use different methods such as usability testing, user testing, and playtesting. Usability testing involves observing and interviewing users as they use the prototype to measure effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. User testing involves asking users to perform specific tasks or scenarios with the prototype to measure functionality, accessibility, and compatibility. Finally, playtesting involves letting users explore and enjoy the prototype to measure engagement, fun, and emotion. All of these methods will help you uncover usability issues and user preferences as well as validate user stories and user journeys.

5 Iterate on your VR prototype

Based on the results of your VR testing, you need to iterate on your VR prototype. This means making changes and improvements to your design, based on the data and feedback you collected from your audience. Prioritizing, prototyping, and validating are techniques that can be used to do this. With prioritization, you can rank issues and feedback by importance and urgency to decide what changes should be made first. Prototyping involves creating and testing new versions of the prototype with the changes you decided to make. Validation is used to verify that the prototype meets the audience's goals and needs, and fulfills design objectives. Ultimately, these techniques can help you solve identified issues and feedback, while also enhancing the VR experience.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?