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7 Ergonomics Rules for Designing VR Workspace
Virtual reality needs to be ergonomic for a good user experience
The goal of the metaverse seems to be to take an increasing place in the professional life of users.
Microsoft is betting on mixed reality, while Meta is aiming at virtual reality. Both were presented around office applications and use cases related to collaboration between professionals.
If such a future emerges in the professional world, it will be necessary to rethink workspaces around these new technologies in the same way that computers have changed our professional habits.
As technologies evolve but humans remain the same, it is possible to build on current workspace design rules to anticipate the necessary specifications.
There are six axes according to several national institutes:
- Access and circulation
- Communication
- Time constaints
- Physical nuisances
- Information
- Handling and efforts
- Work position
ACCESS AND CIRCULATION
The workstation must be easily accessible while minimizing the fatigue to get there.
In the context of virtual or mixed reality work, this criterion is expressed in several ways.
If the user has a traditional workstation, a desk, he must be able to reach it, taking into account that his vision will be limited or absent. It can be assumed that the work will necessarily be mixed between a physical office and VR insofar as not everything is achievable in VR or rather that some things will be easier to do physically. The layout of physical workstations will therefore have to be very broad and use non-visual cues to help users.
In the virtual workspace, the question of movement in the virtual universe will arise. Today, movement is mainly done by teleportation from one point to another to avoid kinetosis (motion sickness). In the context…