An enormous part of
creating usable interactions is clarity.
This means that the participant
never feels lost or confused
about what to do next.
And there are many techniques
that you can use to create
more intuitive experiences.
First and foremost,
it's important to create clear
visual hierarchies
using the design principles
that I covered in Section
three of this video series.
Things like contrast,
size, position, color,
negative space and movement
can all help create cohesive
and easy to understand experiences.
By using strong visual hierarchies
you're essentially creating emphasis,
which helps to direct your participant
to the most important parts
of the experience.
Responding to your audience's
input is vital.
When a person taps
something, there should be a response.
That's why
website buttons
often change color on hover and on tap.
You're communicating
to the person using the website.
Hey, I see what you're doing.
If you tap this it'll do something.
It's all about
call and response
between you and your participant.
For example,
when someone taps this flower,
I want the flower to immediately
spin and play a sound effect.
This very clearly tells them
that their tap did something.
You gain their trust
because you listen to them
and you've added authenticity
to the world that you're building.
It will give them the curiosity
and confidence
to explore your experience further.
A hit area
meaning the space
a type of object takes up
must be large enough to be tapped easily
and have enough space around it
so that you don't accidentally tap
something else.
People have a lot
of accumulated knowledge
that they've learned
from other parts of the world.
Websites, books, calculators, ATMs,
you name it.
And you can use
that preexisting knowledge
to make your experience more intuitive.
Things that are designed with this
in mind reduce cognitive load
feel instinctual
and have better usability.
For example, in this experience,
I've used a path along the ground
because we're all familiar with paths.
It says to the participant,
Oh, I could follow this path
and it will lead me somewhere.
It's one more tool to help you create
clear, easy to navigate experiences.
If an interaction
or a piece of information is fundamental
to the storytelling of your piece,
make sure that its trigger
is discoverable
and consider giving it multiple triggers.
For example,
since I need my participant
to tap on this flower
to launch the finale,
I'm going to attach a proximity trigger
which will cause an animation
and will give them an instruction.
In this case, to tap.
The animation is movement,
which catches people's eye
and the instruction
gives them additional information.
So if they aren't used
to tapping on things
and spatial experiences,
they won't miss this important
part of my piece.
One of the defining features
of augmented reality
is its spatial nature.
The experiences are happening
around the participants body.
This leads to
more potent emotional reactions
and a variety of new input techniques.
One of those techniques
is proximity triggers.
When a participant gets
within a certain distance from an object,
an event is triggered.
For example,
I have created an inter proximity trigger
for this blossom.
When a user gets close to it,
it will spin,
and if they tap it,
it will orbit
around their body indefinitely.
When designing interaction
for AR experiences, it's
especially important
to consider interactive depth.
By this,
I mean using layers of interaction
and a variety of trigger types.
Each will offer its own reward
and will contribute
to the authenticity of the world
that you're building.
I always try to use a blend of essential
and optional interactions.
For example, in this piece I have got one
central interaction
which is tapping the red flower,
but I've sprinkled
other optional interactions
throughout the experience.
So if people happen to walk toward
or tap a plant
they will be rewarded with a response
like an animation
or some additional piece of storytelling.
I've created a piece that illustrates
all of these concepts in action.
If you'd like to try it yourself,
you can scan the QR code below,
or if you'd like to take a deeper dive
into how I set up the project in Aero,
I've included
the source materials as well.