Some ideas to help creating a design system around a three-dimensional orb theme:
Star Trek Enterprise, time travel map: Orbs distinguished by contained shape and colour. Good accessibility(no red/green contrast). Interesting“network” depiction with individual nodes and events. Small group immersed in the graphics, viewing items from almost same perspective.
Context for 3D display - something to anchor the graphics in space, like a simulated emitter or a piece of furniture? Draws attention and provides focus. Group viewing the same item form different perspectives.
“Pinch to zoom” action - how does this transpate to VR space? Pick up to expand? Individual viewing items, almost a flat screen display.
“Orb on a platform” principle again - world map display. Lacks hierarchy and feed-forward - how are we to interact?
WebGL graph - relies on selecting each orb to get information. Potential for including lots of detailed info for each orb, but needs a better way of giving the user an overview of the situation and possible interactions.
To enable users to learn using the interface quickly, I noted down some UX basics:
Consistency - it needs to work like something users already know(Jakob’s Law)
Hierarchy - in VR we can show that something is important and draw users’ attention through:
size
position in FOV
brightness
colour
shape/form
motion
sound
haptics
Error tolerance: Users need to be able to backtrack
User empowerment: Users need to know where they are in the process, be able to choose what happens next.
Exploring object states - users might know these from websites and 2D dashboards. Attempting to translate to 3D.
States for two types of objects from the v1 concept.
Gives user an idea where they are, and what to pay attention to e.g.“alert” signal.
Takes accessibility into account: No red - green contrast, using blue for positive/active and orange-red for alert/negative instead to facilitate better colour perception(especially important with transparent objects).
Establishes visual hierarchy against a more neutral overall infrastructure.
“Pick-up to expand” interaction concept, drawing on the familiar“pinch to expand” gesture, and referencing the Start Trek“pick up graphic from screen to display hologram” idea. Kind of…
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