The Laws of Simplicity applied to VR
Tips to defy UX complexity in the metaverse.
I first read The Laws of Simplicity by Dr. John Maeda 15 years ago. It came as a breath of fresh air at a time when the user experience of most online services was overly complicated and frustrating. I carried the learnings throughout my career, as I found them equally relevant for designing online services, mobile applications, interactive displays, or chatbots. But it wasn’t until I started to work with VR that I felt the urge to re-read it.
Virtual spatial interfaces have no physical limits — displays, buttons, menus can technically appear anywhere, close or far away, within or beyond the user’s field of view. Inputs can vary from physical controllers, direct or indirect hand interactions, gestures, gaze, and voice commands. Having multiple users adds to the complexity of coordinating how avatars move, travel, and navigate privately in a shared virtual space. Top all that with the fact VR can be used for many purposes from entertainment, to work, to fitness, to communication, and you have a recipe for complexity disaster.
After leading interface design of a VR OS for three years, I decided to share my learnings on dealing with UX complexity in the metaverse. The notes are not a direct application of Maeda’s laws and methods, but my own observations on the same topics. I’m thankful for the years of inspiration I’ve gotten from the book, and grateful for having shared headsets with some of the most brilliant minds in VR. I hope this article will help pay it forward.
1. Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
Window management — the ability to open, minimize, close or move application windows — is already challenging in computers today. Different operating systems have tried to manage that complexity by creating multiple redundant ways to organize, group, or switch window focus, like the Exposé, Mission Control, or Command-Tab on macOS. Browser developers also have noticed the “where’s that tab” problem and are finding ways to allow better grouping and instance management. It seems like we went too far in the pursuit of multitasking, and are now trying to get it under control.
Limiting the number of virtual displays — and the tridimensional layers in which they appear — can significantly reduce complexity and improve ergonomics.
Today, there aren’t many use cases to justify having more than three virtual displays opened concurrently. Besides, there is a max number of displays that can fit comfortably side by side within one’s field of view. Going beyond that limit would require a lot of repositioning and head movement which makes for great Hollywood drama but bad product ergonomics.
More displays does not mean a better multitasking experience. The beauty of VR is not in its ability to have an infinite number of displays open at the same time, but in the ability for the displays to adapt to an infinite number of use cases — from watching a movie on a big screen to working on documents side by side, to video-conferencing with a friend on a small screen while playing an immersive game. Fewer displays means less complexity to manage and therefore better productivity.
2. Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
In the past decade, we have established many design standards to elegantly organize and prioritize content within a limited-sized screen. Hamburger menus, long presses, right clicks, hover states are just a few examples of how we learn to make “a system of many appear fewer”. While some of these standards will likely carry over and adapt, virtual interfaces will introduce new ways to organize and simplify.
In VR, we are no longer limited by 2D constraints such as screen size or a single layer in space, and have multiple new kinds of inputs. This means more ways to group, prioritize, and progressive disclose information. Just like we learned to better organize content on a 2D screen, in VR we’ll learn to make better use of the entire 3D space. For instance:
Zoning
Organizing and prioritizing content in z-depth zones relative to the user. Frequently used functions should be closer and potentially anchored to the user, while less frequent controls can be minimized further away, and yet easily accessible.
Anchoring
Not all content has to be constantly displayed within the user’s field of view. Information can be distributed contextually by anchoring it to places, objects, or avatars where they are more likely to be relevant.
Gazing
One of the magic tricks of MR is knowing where the user is looking at. Looking at an object from a distance can give you high-level information, while leaning in can give you more details.
3. Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity.
Coordinating group VR activities takes more time than it should. The experience varies depending on the platform or activity, but roughly it goes like this: first you create a party and invite people into VR. Once people have their headsets on, you choose what to do together and make sure everyone in the group buys, downloads, and successfully installs the VR app you are about to join. Then you launch the apps and hope you will all land in the same spot — as some applications have different rooms or locations, there may be an extra step of finding each other before we can start the activity. Want to do something else? Start all over again.
While some steps on this journey are hard to simplify — like making sure everyone is online at the same time — we could “shrink” the perception of time, making the experience feel shorter and more tolerable.
Making smart recommendations based on who is online and the apps they own cuts out the time for people to join, buy, and download apps. Showing the virtual location of each party member before joining the activity, cuts coordination time to get to the same spot. Making transitions between VR applications smoother, so you don’t have to wait in a dark environment staring at the app logo while waiting for it to load. Traveling can be hard work, but should feel like fun — especially in VR.
4. Learn
Knowledge makes everything simple.
When introduced, innovative products often rely on familiar design patterns to avoid being too disruptive, and that is certainly the case in VR. Most of the virtual interfaces today borrow interactive patterns from mobile or computer platforms, and virtual environments are quite literal in copying their real-life equivalent. But while familiarity is necessary, a certain level of surprise helps people engage.
Just like mobile design went from skeuomorphic to mobile-native, VR-native patterns can make better use of the technology to create exciting interfaces that are more appropriate for this medium. What is the 3D equivalent of a drop-down menu, for example? What is the hand-gesture equivalent of a mouse right-click?
As for virtual environments, familiarity is important to keep people at ease and wanting to spend time in VR. Virtual environments need to be carefully designed for comfort, but that doesn’t necessarily mean simulating real-life spaces. As long as we don’t dramatically break the laws of physics, and honor some basic architectural rules around space size, colors, textures, and temperature, we can make people feel comfortable, yet surprised and delighted. After all, why choose reality when you are in VR?
5. Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other.
We learned to navigate simplicity and complexity using different devices that are more appropriate for the task at hand. We use our smartwatch for the simplest tasks like checking notifications, our phones, and tablets for low to mildly complex tasks like reading and responding to an email, checking the news or shopping, and we use computers — laptops or desktops, sometimes accompanied by multiple monitors and other peripherals — for highly complex tasks like working and multitasking. Today, we rely on an entire ecosystem of devices, but in the future, we may not need to.
I’m not suggesting that headsets will become the “one device to rule them all,” but I do believe they will cover a larger set of use cases than any other device.
Virtual interfaces can adapt and take any shape or form, from a minimal and non-intrusive display to large theater, to a multi-monitor setup. Different forms of input can also be used depending on the complexity of the task, simple hand gestures for scrolling or moving displays, virtual or physical keyboards for work. The ability to seamlessly switch between different setups is perhaps the strongest advantage VR headsets will have over other devices, and the reason VR headsets will eventually become less of a gaming device and more of an immersive computer.
6. Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
Understanding the context in which an interface is displayed is always important, but it is perhaps most important in AR / MR where interfaces can quite literally get in the way of what you are doing.
AR interfaces will give us superpowers like knowing directions, comparing prices, giving extra information about people and places, pointing out hazards and how to avoid them. But to be helpful, these interfaces will need to be minimal and aware of their context. They need to provide maximum value to justify their appearance while occupying the minimum field of view to not be distracting. And they need to be aware of the physical environment you are in so they can display only relevant content, preferably anchored to objects, places, and people, instead of tethered to the user’s vision.
Understanding context is also important for designing inputs. While hand gestures and voice commands will certainly continue to play a role in how we interact with virtual interfaces, we’ll need to create discrete inputs that are more socially accepted and don’t disturb people around us. This will likely mean some of the interactions will require using a second device, such as your phone or watch, as your AR input. You don’t want to be that guy gesturing by yourself, or voicing commands out loud across the room.
7. Emotion
More emotions are better than less.
Emotions are the reason people join VR. We want to feel immersed in a place we can’t go otherwise or to feel someone’s presence when that someone is physically out of reach. So while VR interfaces need to be simple, they should strive for never breaking the magical feeling of immersion. This does not mean adding bells and whistles — in fact, quite the opposite. It means designing interfaces to blend in, to feel like they belong in the immersive space, so much that you are oblivious to them. Like when you are in a movie theater, everything that competes with the big screen becomes a distraction, taking away from the experience.
There are a few ways to keep a VR interface from breaking immersion. First — and perhaps the most technically challenging — is to make it contextually aware so it never collides with the virtual environment or the objects in it. A navigation bar that appears cutting through the body of a T-Rex is a mind-bending distraction. Second, using subtle geometry and materials that help the interface blend in. Adding a bit of volume to flat surfaces can help them feel real in an environment where everything else is tridimensional, while reflective materials can make the interface more integrated with the virtual environment lights. Third, adding spatial sound design is the icing on the cake to make a visual interface look, feel, and sound immersed.
As Dr. Maeda writes in his book, “the fundamental distinction between art and design is that art makes you wonder while design makes it clear” — and in VR, you should get both.
8. Trust
In simplicity we trust.
Real life comes with basic privacy guarantees built-in. When you are by yourself in your room, you know you are alone. If the door is shut and the windows closed, you know no one is watching. If you are watching a video on your phone and no one else is behind you, you trust no one else is seeing it. And if you choose to cast that video to the living room TV, you know that now everyone in the living room can see the exact same video. Unless you are being spied on or hacked, real life gives you a pretty clear understanding of what is private and what is public at all times. We live with a simple privacy model that we all understand and trust.
That is not necessarily true in VR. While platforms do provide certain privacy guarantees, applications can choose different ways to represent virtual presence. While on application A everyone present is represented with embodied avatars, application B can give this choice to each user, allowing a group of people to be represented differently, some embodied, some not. Apps also can choose how they handle their interfaces, privately or publicly, and have different ways to indicate the difference. It’s like every time you visit a different house you have no way to know if you are alone or with others and if they are seeing the same things you are seeing.
The complexity of having to deal with different mental models for privacy can make it hard for people to feel safe and trust.
I believe this will evolve rapidly when virtual presence capabilities are introduced at the platform level. Applications will likely have to adopt a single privacy model that is simple and clear to all users. First, you should always be able to see who is in a virtual room with you — no disembodied lurkers allowed. Second, interfaces should be private by default like a computer with a privacy screen on — no one around you can see it unless you intentionally choose to share. Third, what is shared publicly, is public to all. When you see a video being played on a public virtual display, you know all other avatars in the room can see it too.
While in many areas I’m bullish about creating VR-native standards, when it comes to virtual presence I believe that following well-established real-life privacy rules is a great way to start.
9. Failure
Some things can never be made simple.
Like many other groundbreaking tech products, the first VR headsets were hacked together in a garage. Oculus was introduced as a Kickstarter project in 2012 before the start-up was acquired by Facebook (now Meta). Oculus Rift, the first consumer headset launched after the acquisition, was still a niche product focused on gamers, requiring a tethered PC computer and a pair of external antennas for tracking. Then came the mobile-based Oculus Go that provided only three degrees of freedom (3DOF), mostly focused on 3D media playing. It wasn’t until the launch of Oculus Quest — the company’s first untethered 6DOF device — that VR started to reach the masses and, with Quest 2, branch beyond entertainment use cases. I think it’s fair to say it took almost 10 years and billions of dollars for this brilliant piece of technology to find its footing.
Reaching for simplicity too early when a product or an entire industry is still “under construction” is a challenge. There are so many unknowns and priorities that investing time to simplify and polish an experience may feel like putting too many eggs in one basket, or worse, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. But while over-investing in simplicity too early can be a mistake, not investing early enough can be a missed opportunity. Oculus Quest, for instance, is a big hit likely because of its simplicity — no cables, no computers, no external antennas, easy to set up, easy to use. Had Facebook not simplified the experience early enough, its product would probably not have seen the tremendous growth it has in the last few years.
While simplicity alone cannot guarantee that an early product won’t fail, it can be the very reason for it to succeed.
10. The one
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
Cutting out the things people don’t care about and focusing on things people can’t live without is much more than a design goal, it’s how most businesses thrive. And as hundreds of new developers embark on their first VR / AR adventure, I truly hope they take this law to heart.
There is obviously no recipe for success, but I believe the types of virtual applications that people will care about are the ones that enable or enhance real-life experiences. Enabling people to properly do things together without being physically close, as one long year of lockdown showed us, is a big deal. Being able to be virtually present, for work or for fun, and perform tasks that are harder to do from afar is a glaring need waiting to be fulfilled. Enhancing people’s current experience in ways that are more economical, practical, or effective, like watching a movie on a theater-size screen or working with multiple monitors, or training with real-life-like instruments is also another wide-open road to explore.
Then there is the challenge of execution. Execution alone can be the difference between an app becoming “another photo app” or Instagram. So ask not what can be done in VR, ask what can be done better in VR. And remember that one thing done well is better than many things done poorly. Subtract the obvious, add the meaningful. Then simplify, simplify, simplify.
Full articles
Introduction: Inspired by John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity.
- Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
- Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
- Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
- Learn: Knowledge makes everything simple.
- Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
- Context: What lies on the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
- Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
- Trust: In simplicity we trust.
- Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
- The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
