Last week I attended the IMSH Society for Simulation in Healthcare conference, and let me tell you, it was quite an experience. Many of the items on display there were not for the faint of heart, and one poor actress in a booth had to pretend to give birth to a fake baby at regular intervals throughout the day. Hope she was paid well.
There was also plenty of spatial computing and extended reality content on offer, much more so than in previous years according to regular attendees. And while that is certainly gratifying to see, a quick stroll of the floor for demos revealed that there are some areas we need to improve in before this technology can scale.
Many of the booths were manned by experienced docents, which is a best practice for trade shows -- unfortunately, this also revealed a huge limitation. I've been working in this space for almost nine years and if you need to stand next to someone like me and tell them where to click and what to do, how is that going to work when a medical student who has never seen a headset before puts one on for the first time. Sure, you can send docents and instructors out to sites, but that's a big cost and barrier to scaling.
I've long advocated that you should design for the least technical person who would reasonably be expected to go through a simulation. If your core audience is young men with gaming backgrounds, by all means, go nuts. But if your audience is broader than this and includes novices, you need to really scale back; otherwise, the frustration and friction is too great. People blame themselves when technology doesn't work, and give up with a negative impression.
What does all this mean? It means using voice or gaze to drive simulations, or limiting the amount of controller actions someone might need to use. It means lots of in-headset on-boarding, in a way that feels natural and allows people to fail early and without consequence. I once worked on a piece for a data warehouse company, and we started people off by having them use the controllers to make a snack in the break room. It allowed them to learn and make mistakes in a low stress environment, rather than having to remember which button to push when you were in the middle of a high stakes situation.
We're still figuring out best practices for all this, and at the end of the day, it's really exciting to see so many people playing in this space. But keeping it simple will be the path forward.