- The world in 3D
- Affordances
- Multimodal experiences
- Experience design
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Experience design
Throughout this chapter we have been looking at foundational elements of the immersive experience. Starting with some of the new vocabulary and workflow of working within a 3D rendering program, moving on to understanding how to create the best interactions with those elements, and then looking at how much our senses are a part of the experience. All of these elements need to be designed in harmony to create a positive experience for the user. Now that we have set the foundation of what the capabilities of technology are as well as explored some of the introductory concepts to designing for XR, it is time to start going through each step of the design process, starting with coming up with your next big idea.
DESIGN CHALLENGE: 3D MODEL
For this challenge you will need a couple supplies:
Marshmallows (small ones work best, but you can use whatever you have)
Toothpicks
If you don’t have one or both of these, then you can be creative with substituting other options. Instead of marshmallows, you could use clay, modeling dough, dried or fresh fruit, gummy bears—anything soft. Instead of toothpicks, you could use cotton swabs, craft sticks, pencils, branches—anything that you have a lot of and that is long and thin.
Once you collect your supplies, it is time to get to work. To start, select a primitive shape—cube, prism, cone, or cylinder—to create. You will use your marshmallows as the vertices to hold together your toothpicks, which will act as the edges. Start by completing one face (one polygon) of the shape. For example, if you are building a cube, then create a square as the first face. From there, build out your full cube using your supplies. This first round is just to help your brain understand how to put a 3D shape together. For a bigger challenge, find three objects around you and create three separate marshmallow models to represent them.
Be creative. The only rules are that you use only your marshmallows and toothpicks and that the objects must be full 3D models. See if you can challenge yourself to use as few polygons as possible to create the shapes.
(Oh, and don’t forget to save some extra marshmallows for a snack after all that hard work!)
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