Ways of Seeing
Prototyping New Methods for Environment Switching in VR
Recently on View at Photo Center Northwest in Seattle.
Imagine, if you will, the ability to see other environments through bubbles which float around your body and space like portals to other experiences. With your hands you can catch these bubbles and look closer inside their contents like looking into a magnifying glass that lets you see other perceptions. You can place the bubble on your head to enter that environment and continue through multiple existences.
That’s the most succinct way to describe the experience that I collaborated to create with my friend Jose Pacio. I’ve been working with Jose on a few Virtual Reality experiences this past year and our most recent creation as of this writing has been a ball of virtuality rolling down a hill collecting steam the further it goes. For this piece “Ways of Seeing”, the boundaries of artistic ownership are blurred and rather shared as it includes environments which are interpretations of the work of several contributing artists. The piece evolved with more environments being added and refinements made throughout the 3-month long exhibition. The image below is a VR image capture from the experience featuring the work of Birthe Piontek @birthepiontek, Samer Fouad @samer__fouad.psd, Savannah Ostrwoski @savannahostrowski, Jose Pacio, and myself. Thanks to @corpuscrystal for grabbing the VR image like a picture of many pictures.

Design Overview
As spatial computing continues to evolve, so too will our need to invent new methods for navigating these environments beyond what we currently realize to be possible. What methods can be uncovered for interacting with virtual environments that prove more intuitive and compelling than by using traditional real-world methods and conceptions? This inquiry might both expand on our current understandings of interaction and also help to redefine the possibilities of the experiences within spacial computing environments that we will eventually find ourselves interfacing with. This project is essentially a future UX/UI experience or prototype from which to gain insights from to further our understanding of what is possible and inspire further inquiries.
Experience Description
I’ve found that describing or even seeing screen shots of virtual reality is really incomparable to the immersive perspective of actually experiencing it firsthand, but I’ll do my best. Imagine that you’re within an environment and you can summon medium-sized bubbles or spheres to float around you. You can grab the bubbles with your hands, bringing any of them closer to your face to take a look inside where you see different environments within them. Bringing a bubble even closer and onto your face lets you actually enter that virtual environment like seamlessly emerging on the other side of a portal.
Art + Design
In one sense this work is an interactive immersive art piece within a larger exhibition allowing one to explore and move between virtual worlds made from the interpretted works of other artists. While in another sense this creation functions as a prototype or design research experiment to gather insights into how we might move between mutltiple virtual environments using specific inventive methods not available in the physical world.
Challenges
Redefining intuitive interaction is not easy, requiring thinking beyond what’s in plain sight and testing unknowns beyond the belief of contemporary logic. It’s like looking for the moments just beyond what we understand to be currently possible, untethering the restraint of the conventional and practical. In the case of virtual and augmented realities, this takes into consideration that the perceivable laws of physics are upended, redefining our understanding and relationships to environments and objects. Our current version of real-world based logic tells us that in order to go to another environment, we have to physically move across space to arrive at the desired location. As we evolve the possibilities of virtual reality, we have permission to think beyond our physical limits and current relationships to environments, allowing us to make conceptual leaps. Our current understanding of a bubble is just a floating sphere or even a container. Redefining a bubble to represent and function as a transitional doorway seems abstract at first, requiring an amendment to our logic.
Insights
What makes this compelling as a possible new method for changing environments is that it attempts to solve an issue present when using current methods in VR. One of the commonly used methods for switching environments is to first initiate the change by pressing a button or object within view. The view then fades to black or goes to a loading screen before you finally arrive in the new environment. This fade-out breaks the continuity of the emersion. By comparison, using this new method of entering the bubbles is progressively seamless as you move it closer to your head. There is no fade-out used to transition to another environment preserving the visual and perceptual continuity of the experience, and thereby does not momentarily disengage you from the experience. It also gives you the ability to quickly preview the next potential environments existing in the bubbles without fully committing to enter them. This is not possible when using a button or a graphic symbol that represents switching to another environment. So in this way, the bubbles become analogous to buttons that you can reposition, look inside of to see their content, and choose to physically enter by bringing them closer to you, or decide not to enter by pushing them away. The bubbles function as this type of readily available environment preview with seamless interactable transitioning to other spaces. Similar methods could be used one day for everything from switching quickly between apps in future VR/AR operating systems to methods for efficiently navigating quickly and comfortably through playspaces or workspaces in virtual environments.
Expanding Boundaries
This project results in us posing a design question through the experience of the physical prototype. While within immersive environments of virtual reality, how can one seamlessly switch environments using methods not traditionally intuitive to our definitions of the real world? This is certainly not the final solution but its a step in an interesting direction.
It’s a thought provoking and engaging experience that quickly feels natural as the desire is already there to touch the bubbles and then look inside of them, possibly leading someone to wonder what the implications might be given this new definition of interaction with bubble as doorway. As spatial computing develops along with our understanding of its potential, we are given the affordance to redefine the bounds of how we navigate our imagination in the context of these environments. Inspired ideas for interacting beyond real-world conventions will emerge and be possible because of these new frameworks for experience, leading to new contexts of thought, redefining what it is intuitive.

Observations
The natural inclination of wanting to grab the bubbles with both hands as opposed to only one hand is what most people seemed prompted to do. One participant said that it’s possible that if they felt like they had more control or fidelity in their hands then they might be more inclined to reach and grab with one hand initially rather than with both hands at once for a single bubble. ~ it would be interesting to implement hand-tracking combined with high fidelity graphics for the hands to see how this would affect the response to grab with one hand or two and how the use of finger control might change the interaction with the bubbles.
The reactions from participants mostly point to these affordances, or things people are naturally inclined to do:
1. Touch the bubbles.
2. Grab and Hold the bubbles.
3. Look into the bubbles once they are close enough to see things inside them.
4. Bring the bubbles up to your face.
5. Enter inside of bubbles.
6. The main priority quickly becomes exploring the all of the environments in the bubbles in rapid succession.
7. Some wanted the ability to combine two environments together by merging two bubbles.
8. Hand-tracking would really go well with these types of interactions and affordances and provide higher fidelity of control.
It’s important to note that all of this examination, reflection, and realization came after creating this prototype which only then subsequently let us ask these questions and provoked these critical thoughts. This “Ways of Seeing” project is an experimental inquiry pushing forward new interaction ideas for virtual reality while testing their affordance, efficiency, and effectiveness over time. It’s also a great way to keep stretching imagination into abstract creative realms of thinking and feeling. Much of the initial creative process started and continued somewhere in the realm of intuition and imagination.
More images and documentation will be added as the project evolves.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
Virtual Reality hardware: Oculus Quest
Hand Tracking: Coming Soon
VR Engine: Unity 2019.1