Timeframe
7 weeks
Team
Zuo Wang
Eric Chang
Hsiang-Yi Lung
Tools
Interviews
Heat map
A/B testing
User journey mapping
Wireframing
Prototyping
Impact
30% increase in user satisfaction
Reduced technical confusion
Optimize the adoption of VR in university education
The product is a web-based VR educational platform for a course at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) that supports students to share and create VR stories for cultural heritages in Hong Kong. The platform is designed to facilitate the VR story-creating process for users with limited prior experiences, with the function of 1) creating VR stories; 2) reviewing VR stories created by others
Users have difficulty understanding how the existing product works
PROBLEM
We delivered the first version of the product for a course at HKU last year. At the end of the course, 86 users were asked to answer a questionnaire of open-ended questions. The comments received from the users were generally positive. However, the course instructor reported that students are confused about how the product works, and asked a great number of questions to the teaching team during the semester. We therefore conducted research to further increase the usability of the product.
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
3 Major design improvements
INSIGHT
6 interviews & moderated usability testings
User persona →
User journey map →
Insight #1
Users appreciate cultural heritage more through creating their own VR stories than viewing others’
Insight #2
Users have difficulty identifying cultural heritage in VR stories made by others’
Insight #3
Users have difficulty navigating between different VR story scenes
Challenge #1
Fulfill client’s requirements to emphasize on both VR story viewing and creating functions
Challenge #2
Improve VR story viewing usability to enhance education on cultural heritage
Challenge #3
Improve navigation between VR story scenes
CHALLENGE 1 | ENHANCE NAVIGATION
Navigation redesign: prioritize intuitive navigation
During the usability testing, it is observed that the user do not understand how the VR story scene navigation works. Users tend to expect the scenes will be automatically connected after adding new scenes.
Scene transition button needs to be manually added on the scenes individually to ensure scenes are connected together, increasing burden on users and the overall friction.
Before
After
VR scenes will be automatically connected once created. Users can change the sequence of the scenes through drag and drop.
CHALLENGE 2 | INCREASE VR STORY USABILITY
What are the users looking at?
One major challenge encountered is to increase the usability of user-created VR stories that we do not have full control over. We cannot control how the users want to craft their VR stories, but it is possible to guide the users indirectly through re-designing the VR story creation system.
Users focus more on subjects with text annotation
Based on the analysis result, we turned the VR story creation interface into text based interface. The story creation is therefore more intuitive and the interface is more user friendly for viewers.
Before
Icons will show in the VR story indicating annotations on certain objects.
After
The subject of the annotation will show directly in the story, replacing the meaningless icons.