The Power Of Constraints: Your greatest Spatial Design Skill

The power to wield constraints as a #designer is not only a super power but a necessity. In this video we will briefly talk about the importance of constraints and their importance in defining the era of #spatialcomputing and #design.
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📖 Chapters -
00:00 - Intro
01:12 - What the heck are constraints?
02:57 - Why the flat past will shape our 3D future!
04:26 - Skeuomorphism, A Sign Of Change
05:50 - The Possible Constraints of the Future
07:21 - Outro

[@xr.melissa]

Sometimes I find people obsessed with designing around the full 360° in VR. It can be cool, but practically speaking, a couple of the primary constraints are field of view and the user's attention. Even though we have the opportunity to create content all around a user, practically speaking, they can only see a portion of it at a time. Human FoV including peripheral vision is roughly ~200° horizontal and ~130° vertical, but the binocular focus area is more like 120° and 60°. If you're creating an ambient environment where you expect people to look around, explore, and be curious, you may want to create content all around. But if you're telling a story or doing something to directly capture attention, you can control the experience to draw their attention where you want it to be in the moment and focus your efforts there. In VR you can't actually force people to look a certain direction, of course, only clever tricks to convince them to, but that's the closest thing we have to the bounds of a screen in spatial as far as I'm concerned. Awesome video! And +1 to @digital4ddict's comment on how constraints help you think outside of the box by first defining what the box is. 🙂

[@digital4ddict]

Constraints. Yes, I love constraints because it allows you to narrow down your focus. When designing something new, I try to make constraints... such as target demo, budget, time. While many designers hate this part, this is something I take seriously as I like to deliver. This directly relates to out of box thinking. When I start a project, I like to know where the box is, how big it is etc. Once I have defined that box, it is much easier to 'Think Outside The Box.' This saying hilariously works great as an analogy for spatial design. For example... your constraint is hand ui... what can you do there and what can you do out of hand ui to make hand ui better. Consequently learning constraints allows you to elevate your career... perhaps as a design manager or technical producer. Probably my favorite constraint in my career has been polishing someone else's turd. lol. The constraints are so limited as I have to take what they have done and save it with minimal budget spend. It is pure craft work.

[@denysbastov3552]

Cool video, bookmarked

[@hazyipa]

Constraints! Love this conversation, particularly when it comes to mass adoption of this tech. (for the record, I think mixed reality is way more interesting than virtual reality) I think the grand daddy of all constraints is form factor: - The most obvious (and least interesting) impact is on comfort; this isn't really something we can address as software designers (though I'm open to ideas). - Controllers vs. hands - while hand tracking is probably more pertinent to everyday use (+ the tech is getting *really* good), it's hard to beat the precision of a controller. I think exploring gestures is a very, very interesting path-but they're not as accessible (learnability), and power users will always need some kind of external, physical interface... - ...unless neural interfaces get substantially better. The problem with brain-computer interfaces is that (from my limited understanding) you really need something invasive-which (a) drives down accessibility, and (b) calls in ethical questions. - The deeper conversation is around the impact of form on the social aspect. And figuring this out is going to be hard, until we get a better glimpse of what's down the road. I am 100% onboard for the vision-for XR to pull us out from our 2d screens, and back into our bodies, the world, and the people around us. But re: that last part, about people... Ideally, (1) we can see each other's faces, and (2) we can point + interact in a shared experience. IMO unlocking this is the real jewel, the killer app, the whatever for XR. (1) is going to be quite difficult. We can debate over the necessity of this, but the sense I get is that we're not going to see people using this technology outside of their homes until we unlock it. It *sucks* to talk to someone with a headset on. And while Apple was on to something, I don't think we'll escape the uncanny valley unless everyone is able to access Meta's Pixel Codec Avatars. So for us as designers, I think we need to prepare for glasses, and the extreme constraints of image display technology there. TechAltar's last two videos are a very good place to start: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jJmpfH6sgLRpqbcsi=FnjxJ9ei2Qp7pLVL (2) we've figured this out in VR, but not yet in MR. It's hard to know what it'll look like. It really depends on how the tech develops. But if I had to blindly throw a dart at the wall, I'd start thinking about how physical artifacts, used as reference points, come into play.

[@marqusee]

I honesty don’t know what will happen. Social adoption is a weird thing. We currently smash plastic in our eyes and that’s socially acceptable.

[@hazyipa]

@@marqusee are you talking about contacts?

[@CamVanZek]

Juicy Video! First of all, I have never use more left arrow button on my keyboard and space to pause a video. This little two line of text in bottom left corner, gave me so much joy and inspiration so thank you for that. Going back to the video I really like depth and inside you tackle this XR problem and can't wait for this next video in this series. Talking about constrain I think that they are great to use. Truly essential in any field I can think of. They give a starting point from where you can move forward, they give guidance for further exploration, and form a set of rules at your disposal that help you decide what's solid, good and what's GREAT. As a example I use the world of basketball and two players that came up to my mind. Both Shaq and Steph Curry start their basketball journey with the same rules (ball, lines, court, number of players) but how diffrent their game is from each other. This is trully the testament to their greatness and visionary that they use all that constrains form on them (by the game and their body frame) to revolutionize the game and leave their mark on basketball history. As always great job Dan. Plus minus.

[@marqusee]

Aww thanks bud!

[@aaryaharkare8683]

First my question to everyone (and you) then my answer to your question. My question: As designers we have always thought that reinventing the wheel was a bad practice where the user has to learn a new behaviour. At this point both quest and avp have basically just suplemented having multiple screens in terms of mixed reality. For example with enough money I can recreate the whole thing with retractable tvs and monitors (obv not cost optimised but my point is that it can be done). There is not much new in terms of mixed reality yet which i feel is wrong. I believe that since mixed reality is a completely new segment, it should and would have completely new interactions, satisfy new usecases and use the given medium to show content in a completely new manner. PS even i dont know what or how but i know the current avp and quest sucks bcuz of the fact that it can be supplemented. My question is where do you think mixed reality is headed? Are mixed reality headsets just a laptop alternative or are they something new? Answer: I live constraints simply because they allow me to do my job without repeating mistakes made by others. It is literally the principle of learning from others mistakes personified as a rule jn our field. My favourite constraint, which I suppose might not be a design but rather a product one specifically for me would be making things simple. I have worked in b2b deep tech startups where the tech behind the scenes is super complicated to allow for maximum customisability, and yet my users are laymen. I have had to always think about how to take something super complex and present it in a very dumb and simplistic way. I guess everyone has this constraint in one way pr another but i personally find it very fascinating.

[@ninjarobotstudiollc]

Awesome video. Constraints, to me, are where innovation and creativity truly shine. Also, I agree with @xr.melissa on the constraint of Human FoV. Add onto that the constraints of the headset FoV and you've got some good constraints to help you decide where to place objects and content for focus.

[@marqusee]

Totally agree!