You, Me, and Accessibility in 3D Pt. 6: Designing Feedback and Learning

Part 6: Current Page

As users, we are constantly looking to digital experiences to give us feedback. It helps us navigate and understand our actions, status, failure, and success.

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By Caitlyn Haisel, Design Director at CARNEVALE

When we don’t receive the feedback we need, it’s frustrating. We’re left wondering if we performed the right action and if it achieved our goals. Can I tap on this? Is this selected? Did tapping on it work? Did I go to the right page? Is the page broken or just loading? Did the experience understand the command I tried to give it? Did my form submit?

In extended reality (XR), users rely on feedback to understand and learn how to navigate 3D spaces, interact with objects, and where to focus their attention.

As designers, we can utilize feedback as an intentional communication process built into user experiences. Feedback is only effective if it is immediate, intuitive, and accessible to all users.

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In digital experiences, “focus” provides feedback to the user about the state of the currently selected or active component.

In 2D UI, focus states highlight actionable components such as form fields, buttons, and links.

In a 3D environment, there are new types of elements and related actions for users to learn, such as an object that can be selected, picked up, collected, moved, explored, etc. In a world of 3D, without feedback, it can be difficult to understand which elements are interactive, what to focus on, and when you’re interacting with them.

Element Highlighting

Highlighting or other visually distinct effects could be applied to interactive 3D elements to differentiate between other static elements and to focus the user’s attention on it. In augmented reality (AR), this would allow the digital elements to be easily distinguishable from the real world, even if they are otherwise photorealistic. In virtual reality (VR), this could help the user understand what they are interacting with or have selected and align their attention to their goals.

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Focus Spotlight

In XR, focus and feedback can also allow the user to reduce the visual clutter or allow the immersive 3D environment around an important object to recede into the background.

A visual spotlight that uses eye tracking to adjust to the user’s view could be utilized to help visually isolate the elements they see at a given time. This can assist in reducing the feeling of being overwhelmed with the amount of elements and immersion the user is absorbing at a given moment, along with teaching the user what to focus their attention on.

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Adaptive Field of View

Important elements could be pulled to the forefront to prompt the user’s attention, mimicking the natural way our eyes adapt our field of view in the real world. All other elements would be considered background and have a subtle blur applied to help them recede into the background, leaving only the important and actionable elements in focus.

For users who may become overwhelmed, distracted, or confused by the dense visuals often found in XR experiences, features like an adaptive field of view grant immersion reduction without compromising the richness of the experience.

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Assisted Aiming Pointer

In XR experiences, users need the ability to easily navigate focus between 3D interactive elements that have a clear focus state.

Bendy lasers relative to the controller or hand position are a common tool in VR leveraged to give users feedback on the precise location of their focus. This assists in aiming and allows for easy selection of elements farther away, making it both a feedback technique and an accessible navigation method.

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Direct Multi-Sensory Feedback

In XR, the key to delivering accessible and effective feedback is to provide multiple methods to receive it.

When a user successfully performs an action, such as successfully picking up or interacting with an object, users should receive feedback as confirmation. Any single sensory method of feedback, such as visual, may be accessible to some users but completely inaccessible to others. Combining visual, auditory, and haptic feedback makes our experiences more intuitive and accessible.

There are certain UX patterns that most of us immediately recognize, accept, and probably don’t have to think about when we see them.

As we venture into designing accessible XR experiences, we are still inventing the rules that will shape the future of UX. The solution often referenced when speaking about design is that we just need to make it “intuitive.” However, how can we expect that diverse users with diverse backgrounds, experiences, levels of ability, ages, etc., will find new experiences with new navigation, input, and feedback methods intuitive?

We are asking users to navigate our experiences beyond the X and Y axis of a screen. The future of technology is advancing toward digital immersion, and our responsibility as designers is to bridge the gap between our current patterns of UX and the opportunity for accessibility in digital products of the future.

This is an exciting and exploratory phase to design in, and it often requires our users to learn how to use these new spatial experiences and for designers to create the conditions for learning.

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Tutorialization

Tutorials can be designed and offered as a safe space for users to learn, make mistakes, explore, and become acquainted with interactions before entering an XR experience. For VR, the user could be provided with information about how to use the controller or perform specific gestures, move around the world, activate accessibility options, and interact with elements. Tutorials supply the user with the knowledge, support, feedback, and guidance needed to navigate a space that is completely new to them in an environment where it is safe to fail.

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In-Experience Prompts

Tutorialization doesn’t have to end before the experience begins. Additional feedback and guidance can be provided within the experience, offering support in real-time and in context. These additional tutorial items could be weaved into the experience and take the form of audio cues, leading arrows, control cues, gesture indicators, etc. In-experience prompts should include multiple delivery methods such as audio, visual, and haptic, and they should be able to be turned by users off if desired.

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Parallel Reality Content

Emerging technology like parallel reality could be used to adapt an experience (or the world) to the user’s needs in real-time. Parallel reality allows different content to be shown to different users at the same time. Content could be adjusted to different reading levels, length, color contrast, and complexity depending on preference and ability. This could be helpful for users with cognitive, learning, or visual disabilities, along with any number of situational factors. For example, loud environments that make focusing far more difficult or viewing an AR experience outdoors in bright sunlight.

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Error Tolerance

XR experiences should be resilient to human error. In 3D, there are new, spatial considerations for creating an environment where mistakes made by users should be correctable and communicated through feedback.

The tap or selection target size for any element a user interacts with should always be large enough to tap on, even if the object itself is smaller or farther away. This allows for error tolerance if the user slightly misses the element when attempting to tap on or select it with a controller. Larger tap targets also make experiences more accessible to users with low dexterity or mobility, allowing them to tap and select objects that are farther away without requiring the user to physically navigate closer to the object.

At CARNEVALE, we strive to help invent the next generation of user experiences that are both immersive and inclusive to as many people as possible. Designing thoughtful, responsive, and adaptive feedback makes user experiences more accessible, understandable, and delightful.