Discover the Right Problem

My team was given a prompt for our internship by the stakeholders of the CAVE system.

PROBLEM - Untested, inconsistent types of remote controls used for the virtual reality environment, known as the CAVE system, resulted in stationary use of the advanced technology.

Competitive Analysis

To gain a better sense of the foundational device to use, each team member researched a different type of remote control, including joysticks, mouses, gaming controls, etc. We pulled the information together into a competitive analysis and analyzed the pros and cons of each.

Contextual Interviews

We interviewed developers and novice users to get a wider scope of user needs. For the developers, we interviewed them as they walked us through the interface of the virtual reality environment. For the novice users, we took them into the different virtual environments and gave them various tasks in order to observe their interactions with the original remote control. Below are 5 pain points that we discovered across user types.

Affinity Diagram

We consolidated the information from our competitive analysis and discovery research with an affinity diagram, driving each design solution based on user input.

Design the Right Solution

Design Insights

Our discovery period led to these design insights that we incorporated in our proposed design solution.

Button Functions

Pain Point - Unnecessary buttons confused users with what functionality was available to them for each program
Recommendation - Remove superfluous buttons and light up the enabled controls per program

Scroll Wheel

Pain Point - Scroll wheel was unintentionally bumped because of its tall, inconvenient position on the gyromouse
Recommendation - Nest the scroll wheel to protect and position it lower for easier use

Grooves

Pain Point - Holding a controller out in the air allows it to be easily dropped or awkwardly held
Recommendation - Provide grooves for stability, comfort, and affordance for correct holding

SOLUTION - Provide a prototype of a universal remote control for the CAVE systems, which took into account right and left handedness, felt comfortable to hold during use, and didn't have buttons that could be easily pressed by accident.

Proposed Design

A collaborative white boarding session led to a drawing of our proposed design.

Presenting to Stakeholders

We presented our findings and proposed design to a room full of stakeholders, the developers we tested with, and our fellow colleagues. We also published a paper on our case study for the Euromed 2014 conference.

Future Considerations

My group aspired to 3-D print our prototype in order to test the actual feel of it within the CAVE system with our users, and be able to iterate on the physical design.

CAVE Gyromouse

UX Research Intern @ Qualcomm Institute