By: Padma Ravi, Specialist – CX Advisory, LTIMindtree

From Second Life (a technology developed by Linden Lab that allowed people to create an avatar for themselves and have a second life in a virtual world) to Facebook Horizons to Decentraland, the Metaverse is already evolving. Given the experiences people have had on the Metaverse, one really wouldn’t be surprised as to why many others are trying it. There is one primary reason, though: Its novelty that delivers a real-life experience, albeit digitally. This is the same reason people tried Myspace, Orkut, or even Facebook – No one knew what to do on these platforms but was keen on exploring it further.

There are a few companies that have started to work with the Metaverse in designing unique experiences for their customers. Recently, Samsung did an unveiling event in Decentraland, a Metaverse platform. It went poorly, and people struggled to understand what to do and how to get in. The interactions were not defined well, and the feedback was mixed. While it was a new attempt, it was not designed well enough for people to talk more about.

When designing for any new paradigm like the Metaverse, it is good to understand the basics and start from there. There are 10 user interface design heuristics that all of us are familiar with. The Metaverse takes the user interface to the next level since the elements that users interact with also include others. This leads to a scenario where some heuristics are more critical than others.

The critical heuristics include:

• Match between the virtual and real world
• User control and freedom
• Flexibility and efficiency of use

Purists may argue that all heuristics are important. I, however, would like to take the Agile Manifesto, where some heuristics are preferred over others. Let’s dive deeper into each of these three heuristics.

Match between the virtual and real world

All of us would have heard about the use of anthropomorphic design by Apple in some of its early apps. This was needed because people did not know how to interact with mobile apps. Anthropomorphic designs – the pattern of having human attributes to non-human things – have long helped users interact with new paradigms since they have familiar design elements. As time progressed, people learned how to interact and did not need those cues anymore. We will need to incorporate the same principle in interaction design with the Metaverse as well.

Metaverse is a new space, and people are finding the interactions challenging. This has led them to explore the space rather than interact with a purpose. The experience has to be designed in such a way that it creates a connected experience with the real world. This would bring about an emotional connection that would make users stick around and create the network effect that makes any platform a success.

Another good practice to follow that is related to this heuristic is borrowed from the field of domain-driven design – ubiquitous language. Ubiquitous language relates to having a standard set of terms used everywhere with the same meaning and context. While this is always used in the context of engineering, it is also equally important in the context of design. Using the same language allows us to reuse elements and reinforce certain actions at multiple levels of experience across the Metaverse experience.

User control and freedom

When users are in the Metaverse, they need to understand and decide how to navigate the space and when they would like to come out of that experience. During design, it is important to create options for users to navigate more or exit at any point in time. All actions – including those to exit the experience – need to be visible. It is a good practice for users to get a preview of an experience before they select and decide on when they want to exit. Having very clear callouts on when each experience begins and what actions or gestures help them get out of that experience is critical.

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Building on top of the previous heuristic, it is also essential to provide flexibility in terms of having multiple navigation options. Providing simple navigation patterns in place of optional ones is enticing for experienced users.

This is a critical part of designing any new experience – especially for something that is path-breaking, like the Metaverse. This concept is borrowed heavily from gaming – where cheat codes and special actions are very common, and experienced gamers learn and bootstrap their progress way faster than novice gamers.

Designing an experience for the Metaverse needs to include the concepts of shortcuts so that experienced users can leapfrog into the relevant areas of the platform, navigate far more quickly and get the experience they think is relevant. This is the physical equivalent of us entering an IKEA store and finding the pathway that leads us to Ikea Cafe instead of the display area. We would need to make these discoverable and stitch together a very cohesive experience that still makes sense with the parts that experienced users select to miss.

Conclusion:

Experience design for the Metaverse is still a nascent field; there are far more lessons to be learned as the platform evolves and the way the users interact with it. The above heuristics need to be tested to understand if they will be relevant.

With the Metaverse and the next set of human-computer interactions, we need to watch out for the following insights as things evolve.

• Figuring out the relevant heuristics to focus on will be critical.
• We will need to watch out for different versions of Metaverse platforms and how
  various participants interact with the platform and one another.
• We will need to manage the balance between bad actors that abuse the system and good actors who define the right interactions.

We will need to develop new heuristics or update them as we move forward with Metaverse platforms and various actors.

Let’s come back in 2024 and see if these heuristics were included in any designs for Metaverse platforms.

Related content:

• Experience design. And the Metaverse. (linkedin.com)
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/02/25/preparing-your-company-for-the-metaverse/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2022/03/07/the-Metaverse-will-radically-change-content-creation-forever/