Course overview of the user experience and interaction design for augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality course as part of the exam. In this course, we're going to talk about XR design and how to make that transition from more or less traditional user experience and interaction design principles, methods and tools to XR. This is a transition I've made myself and I have taught these topics for many years. I've done research in the space of XR design and coming up with new ways of enriching paper and making paper immersive so that we can use it to actually prototype AR, VR interfaces without writing code and without implementation. The topics that I will cover in this course are very important to me, and I hope you'll learn a lot. The way I've structured this course is into four big blocks. We're going to have an intro where we're going to talk about what doing XR involves, finding your process, and really how do you get started? Then we're going to talk about design thinking. Design thinking is this six-step method coming out of the Stanford Design School. It's been applied for many years in many different areas. It's often associated with product development. It is really about a mindset of how to approach design. I want to make that transition to XR, and now there are interesting challenges with XR. For example, not a lot of users have a lot of experience with XR. There are some early adopters, you might be one of them, but it's not that everybody really experiences XR all day every day. It's not like with mobile and the web where we now have an established set of tools, methods, and principles. With XR, it's actually quite different, and also, the process is still something that is constantly evolving. I think it's a very good thing to look at design thinking and how this may translate to XR. Then we're going to continue into prototyping, both physically and digitally. I've divided this into two kinds of separate modules because I personally think there's a lot of value in physical prototyping. It's a lot of fun. It allows us to think through user experiences and prototype them out using physical materials like paper, transparency, cardboard, and Play-Doh for the 3D modeling parts, which is actually quite fun. It really allows us to think through an experience before we implement it in code, or before we move digitally. Then we also talk about doing things digitally, and then when we do the things digitally, we have a number of options. Since now we're doing AR, VR, we don't just have to do traditional desktop 2D design, we can actually jump right into the headsets and doing it in a way that is called immersive prototyping. When we have covered each of these blocks, I'll give you a quiz and we'll assess your learning and making sure that we're on track. In addition to the quizzes, you'll also have options to access additional content as part of the Honors Track. The Honors Track really comes with a set of activities and exercises that allow you to practice and exercise the methods and skills. In this case, I have created an exercise around design thinking, it's actually a two-step exercise focused on critique, and we're doing design critiques of existing interfaces first based on guidelines and then going also deeper on ethics. The second part of the Honors Track, we're looking more at physical prototyping, and we're coming out of storyboarding and wireframing, and we're going to do paper prototypes. Paper prototypes to me is always one of the most fun activities in any kind of classes that I teach. I think it's a way for the students to really express and explore their creativity. I hope you'll find them valuable and maybe you'll learn a thing or two of how to make good use of physical materials to really think about the experience and to play it through, walk through it, and walk your stakeholders through it before you sit down and really go into coding. Very important, a time-saver, and avoids premature commitment to anything AR, VR. Just because you think you want to do AR, VR, doesn't mean that it's the right solution, and so that's something you may be able to eliminate and rule out early in the process. That's actually really quite important. Then in the last block, the Honors Track is associated with digital prototyping. We're going to have two types of prototypes. We're going to do a digital prototype that is basically just using desktop tools, and then allowing us to preview on an AR, VR device. When we do the immersive prototype, that's really something that I'm still exploring myself, understanding really what's the value of it, what are the kinds of things we should do so you can sketch in 3D and do all kinds of interesting things. If you're really good and faster at it, it might feel very productive. But I'm still trying to figure out what's the real value in the larger workflow and the larger process. None of these techniques are designed to replace each other, they are all designed to complement each other. Let's take a look again. As you're doing your storyboarding, which revolves around wireframes and organizes wireframes basically in the sequencing you're deciding on user flow, then you jump into paper prototypes, and then digital prototypes, and then maybe, optionally, if you want, an immersive prototype. Each of these really tell you more about design. In each of these steps, you learn more about their requirements, and you're getting closer to what we then call the minimum viable product.
