How to avoid vomit-inducing interactive experiences | Mumbrella360 video
Ever wondered how to execute an effective interactive experience without leaving your customers either yawning or vomiting? Experiential software company founder Jack Gillespie reveals the tricks of the trade during this session from Mumbrella360.
According to Jack Gillespie, musician, programmer and technical solutions specialist, VR is something “a bunch of you are going to be excited about, and I’m going to say is terrible”.
“In terms of interactive stuff… a whole bunch of people are going to vomit if your experience goes for more than about three minutes,” he tells the audience during the following session from June’s Mumbrella360 conference.
I would have serious concerns about anyone who says “The best things I’ve seen in VR across the whole industry have been video.”
A very fair point. If I could clarify my intention, I didn’t mean to imply 360 video was superior for every content or medium, and interactive VR is a demonstrably engaging.
However, I believe for the target industry it is often not an effective choice. Interactive VR is a comparatively costly to produce, and the crowd throughput (often an essential metric) is reduced. I don’t think that in 2017, the average Australian is naturally comfortable or familiar with the methods of interaction in a VR environment. This often results in a steeper learning curve and a much longer time for users to feel comfortable. In many cases, the complete experience needs to be extremely time efficient, 2-5 minutes total.
Factors like needing to clean the headsets, helping people get them on, motion sickness etc can also really hurt the number of people who get to use the created experience.
Thanks for watching!
Jack
Absolutely feel the same as the above commenter. I actually produce VR videos (360 videos as they’re actually known though many don’t refer to them as that!) for a 360 virtual tour company (www.onlinevr.co.uk) and though they’re fun to look around, nothing beats the engagement you get from actually being able to interact with an environment. I’ve been experimenting recently with adding interactive elements to my media but even so I don’t think my interactive photos and videos come close to the engagement levels of even a basic VR game. Even if that’s something as basic as a gear VR controller game such as Drop Dead, you go from feeling like a passenger to an interactive player by being able to take part.