After brainstorming last week, our team has decided on two general direction for further explorations on UI, which are 3D physical objects for navigation and flat UIs matched on controller for navigation.
Developing from there, our team has look deeper and more detailedly into the user experience in build mode of PC version. We concluded that there are only two points of input which are mouse click and keyboard. For the mouse click, users mostly use them to navigate the categories for different objects, it will be a huge challenge to translate that whole system into VR. There are mainly two things most used on the keyboard – Esc for exiting a tool and Delete for deleting an object. The keyboard input is a very difficult subject for us. How should we make the Esc and Delete interface more intuitive?
Based on our brainstorming, we paper prototyped and playtested our 3D object UI with a workshop this week. We set up a workspace with drawers labeled with different rooms and put around 10 items in each drawer. We found it was very intuitive for playtesters to navigate through a large set of elements in the physical space. And they felt pretty comfortable with pulling out and pulling in drawers frequently. And the physically picking up object movement also makes sense when they want to decorate their house.
For programming part, building on what we had last week, we completed the function that allows the player to scale a rectangular room that has been built on the lot. Using the Vive controller, they can press the trigger to grab a wall and drag it to resize the room. The floor tiles and ceiling will resize with the walls. We also completed a shader that highlights the grid below the Vive controller’s position, so the player will know exactly where on the lot they are building.
For the art side of the team during week 3, we started by wrapping up work on branding, which we needed to be close to a finished product for a faculty critique. After the critique we finalized the poster, halfsheet, and logo, for our
branding that will be used throughout the semester.
We also started to work on so of the UI design for the user experience in a paper prototype form. We handed off some new models to our programmers, in which will also be used in the future prototypes to test the UI in the Vive.
Finally we have started to work on the team photo that will be added to the submission of the branding for the project right before quarters presentations.