What if there was a way to jump into the future to experience a product before it exists? 

In this article, you will learn more about the prototyping step of designing a product and how it can be approached in various ways. Furthermore, you will dive into the concept of immersive prototyping and how it can be leveraged as a way to gather feedback about a product using virtual reality (VR).

The Value of Prototyping

Prototyping is one of the most crucial steps in the design process as it is the step where ideas (mental beings that live inside our minds) are brought to life in the real world and we can see them and interact with them. When we are developing a product, prototyping can help us to envision how the product could look like in the final stages. A prototype can be created in many ways depending on the situation - it can be low fidelity (lo-fi) when we want to create something quickly or it can be high fidelity (hi-fi) when we want to show fully working functionalities and details. Furthermore, it can be physical, digital or a mix between both. In the end, the core purpose of prototyping should be communication - we want to communicate how we envision the product in a specific stage and gather feedback from others in order to know how to proceed with its further development.

Bringing abstract ideas to concrete prototypes

A prototype can be a sketch, a wireframe or a 3D visualisation, for instance, which are ways to explain our ideas visually. This sometimes provides us with enough information to understand the product's concept but in some situations it could be hard to envision how we can interact with the product. In those cases we could use hardware (e.g. Arduino) or digital tools like Figma or ProtoPie to explain our ideas interactively.

Such representations of our ideas can really help us to communicate with others but what if we could somehow let other people join the world the way we see it and let them experience that firsthand?

The Concept of Immersive Prototyping

Prototypes of a product are still unfinished versions of it and we can fully envision it when it has been developed completely. Then our idea for it has become tangible enough and we can gather better insights from others because it is easier to communicate the concept. However, the process of getting there could often cost us a lot of time, effort and/or money.

But what if there was a way of gaining better insights sooner in the design process by looking into the future and seeing how a product would be used in a given context as if it was already existing?

How can designers learn from their mistakes in a faster, more efficient way and improve the product before going into the resource-consuming phase of product implementation?

This is where immersive prototyping could be a possible solution - an innovative fusion of visual storytelling and interactive storytelling which blends the benefits of both physical and digital prototyping into a new way of prototyping.

Immersive design. A look into what happens when we design beyond a screen

Immersive prototyping would assumingly provide the visual and interactive experience of a product without having the need to build it. In this way the design process could be shorter and iterations could be done quicker which would bring more value to the implementation phase when it happens. Such a prototype would stimulate the process of envisioning and gathering valuable user insights sooner in the design process. It could improve the collaboration between different types of designers such as physical and digital ones, in a way that they can combine different end products to provide an immersive experience. (e.g. high-level 3D model of a coffee machine and digital prototype of its UI)

Emerging technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) could be utilised to create the effect of immersion. Here is an example of a hi-fi prototype which uses MR to fully immerse pilots in a fighter jet training:

Hi-fi immersive prototype idea with mixed reality (MR)

Here is another example of leveraging VR to create immersive experiences:

Hi-fi immersive prototype idea with virtual reality (VR)

Creating an Immersive Prototype with VR

Getting Familiar with VR Concepts

The first step of creating a prototype with a certain technology is to understand the technology. Working with VR for achieving an immersive prototype requires a particular set of tools and technologies such as:

• a VR headset
• a game engine
• a software development kit (or SDK, in short)

The VR headset is the tool that gets the user immersed into a given experience by providing the needed visual and auditory feedback through the headset itself and haptic feedback through specific controllers. The technology requires a powerful graphics card to run things smoothly.

VR headset types of feedback

The game engine is a development platform for creating such experiences and acts as the playground where all the assets are loaded. It can handle all the needed aspects of the experience like the graphics (what the user sees) and the physics (how objects behave and interact with each other in the virtual setting). Since such experiences are similar to video games which are also created with game engines, the “user” can also be called the “player”.

The SDK is usually an external package/plugin which has all the needed source code to allow the connection between the VR headset and the game engine. It has to be installed separately.

Choosing Fitting Tools and Technologies

After getting familiar with some VR concepts, a choice of specific VR headset, game engine and SDK will be needed. The following choices are a good combination:

• Oculus Quest 2 as the VR headset
• Unity as the game engine
• Unity XR as the SDK

The Oculus Quest 2 is one of the most affordable VR headsets at the moment, capable of running VR simulations. A big advantage is that it has built in trackers which makes it a standalone headset and a more portable option compared to other headsets such as the HTC Vive which requires base stations for tracking the headset and hand controllers. Furthermore, it is perfectly compatible with the choice of the other tools and technologies.

In terms of game engine, there are multiple ones that are free to use like Unity, Unreal Engine or Godot. Unity has many viable resources developed by others which can be integrated to serve various purposes (e.g. scripts, plugins, assets, etc.), a large community with lots of answered questions by other developers (useful for community research) and the integration with VR is becoming easier.

Unity - a suitable game engine for VR prototype development

Regarding the choice of a SDK, the Unity XR SDK is a very flexible option but SteamVR and Oculus Integration are also good choices. The problem with the last two is that they are dependent on a specific headset which is not handy since the prototype will not work for different headsets. The Unity XR SDK has been developed with the idea of supporting multiple platforms with one package. As it is Unity’s own solution, it is a reliable choice and can be trusted to be flexible. Fortunately, a lot of useful tutorials exist for all three SDKs and this is beneficial for learning purposes and tinkering during the prototype phase.

Example

Creating an immersive prototype is almost like creating a video game because we are working with Unity and the user that interacts with the virtual prototype resembles a player of a game. The following YouTube tutorial (and the channel of the video!) offers explanation about different VR interactions using Unity for video games. The concepts can be leveraged for creating immersive prototypes.

Introduction to VR in Unity

The series playlist can be found in the additional resources at the end of the article.

Conclusion

Prototyping is a very important step in the process of designing a product. It can be approached in different ways by creating lo-fi or hi-fi prototypes, digital or physical ones, or explaining a concept visually or interactively. In the end, its purpose is communication - we want to communicate our ideas with others but also with ourselves in order to evaluate what we were envisioning in our minds. The more immersive our prototypes are, the sooner we can gather better insights which we can use to improve our product in the long term. One way to create immersive prototypes is by using virtual reality (VR) which allows us to immerse others into our mental space. An immersive prototype simulates the interaction with a product with the help of VR, for instance, which provides an opportunity to test the product without having the need to realise it yet. From such an experience a lot of valuable insights for improving the product could be gathered sooner in the design process.

Thank you for reading my article. I hope it was useful for you to catch a glimpse into the world of VR and how this emerging technology can be leveraged for prototyping. 🥽✨

Additional Resources:

• Getting Started with Prototyping | A Beginner's Guide to Design Thinking
• Get started with Unity
• Introduction to VR in Unity
• Get started with ProtoPie