The making of a “thing” happens in loads of different ways, but I’ve always found it’s best to have some sort of process to get a good result. It doesn’t have to be onerous, just something repeatable that considers a few things consistently.

To avoid an overly long post I plan to write a series on this subject. Here’s a few tips to get you started:

Start with people – It’s always tempting to just start building stuff, but you should always start with your target audience. That is the audience you intend to use you’re app. It’s easy to think it’s “everyone”, but is that really true? What experience do they have with VR/AR? Also consider this is a physical medium, so you may be making greater physical demands of your audience than with other digital experiences.  Jumping may require users to physically jump, their height may be a factor, and so on. Simply writing a few sentences describing who your user is and what you expect them to do can be very powerful. For example:

The end users for ProjectX are likely to be people who are new to VR, but who have already experienced various games in their life. They are probably going to be 25-35 and own a smartphone. They'll be expected to stand, reach, jump and turn with relative ease.

Develop personas – I’ve always been a fan of personas. They are simple to put together, and make it easy to conceptualise your audience. Something to be aware of though is that personas by their nature are a generalisation of an audience. They will never cover all of the details, so you should expect to continue to refine them over time. With this in mind start with something simple you can build upon. Something like this:

Image:

Name: Anna
Age: 36
Role: Scientist/Marketer
VR Experience: Little to none
Quote (that sums up their attitude): VR looks interesting and I’d like to give it a go.
About this person: Anna is a highly educated working mother of two. She has a busy lifestyle but is always interested in new and interesting things. She prefers to try things before jumping in head first and enjoys things she can share with her family.

Statement of purpose
A good statement helps us understand what we are building by defining simple project scope. It should be concise and ideally no more than one or two sentences long. It’s something you should keep visible to constantly remind you of what it is your building, and limit the temptation to go too far beyond that.

Here’s an example purpose statement:

ProjectX is a mobile VR app which gives new VR users a quick taste of a VR via their existing smartphone. The entire experience should take no more than a few minutes.

Make disposable concepts and iterate – In the beginning, everything you do should be simple, quick, and disposable. Use materials, tools, and techniques that enable this. Pen and paper are a surprisingly useful and versatile tool set. Expect to be wrong, it helps you keep an open mind on other options, not becoming too attached to any one thing. Iterate, iterate, then iterate some more. Eventually, you’ll find something you’re happy to move on with. Steadily increase the complexity and sophistication of your work as the idea solidifies.

Share your work early and often – You know who your audience is, show them what you’re making. Their feedback will be invaluable. You’ll also be able to get in front of complexity before things become difficult to change. While you’re with your audience take the opportunity to grow your understanding of them and update your personas to match. Note: Be careful to listen for what your user wants, less so how they want it.

Conclusion – Using these simple steps and methods is a great way to start any project, but don’t be afraid to change things up until you find a process that works best for you. Ultimately you need to find what makes your product better for your users and discard the rest.