Metaverse: Behold the age of parodies
Much is being published about Metaversian capabilities in terms of organization of space, foreshadowing a complete shift in the way we, in the Experience Design industry, think about interfaces, layout components, design, user’s flows, interactions, management of files, and so on. I argued, in my last publication, about the potential conceptual struggle User Experience Designers will face while starting to elaborate solutions, products, and experiences within this whole new dimension that we — by now — call metaverse.
This conceptual struggle is that of a parodic take on known aspects of social reality and human relations, as a way to transfer them into a new media. This has happened before endless times: I am sure you were faced with PDF reading engines whose interface presents the PDF file simulating a physical magazine, with flipping 3D pages (and not rarely sound). A medium inside another medium. In the beginning of the internet as we know it, video files presented in TV-like players were far from rare too. The whole epistemological discussion over skeuomorphism could fit well here, but for the present matter, it suffices to remember that we all — at least once — asked ourselves about the real gains of these parodies.
Not so long ago, I published an essay about the Xerox Star, or (Xerox 8010 Information System) “which is considered the first commercialized personal computer endowed […] with an Operational System that was conceptualized as a User-Centered system, from scratch.” This case takes us to another moment in the Experience Design industry, where we can find a major leap of dimensions for the development of means of transiting information. The engineers that were faced with such a challenge registered in a paper published in 1982 (David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, Bill Verplank, and Eric Harslem, Designing the Star User Interface. Byte 4, 1982.) important hints of their thought processes while conceptualizing the first User-centric interface, and throughout the paper we see that the underlying premise was that the interface should present easily recognizable elements that were readily existent in social (professional) environments.
This shaped the overall aspect of the system, and the use of icons that recall physical elements, e.g. files folder for keeping “files” (data clusters we call files), the bin for discarding unwanted files, the Desktop itself, a metaphor of the Desk’s top, and so on. It obviously only reflected the reality and objects of — majoritarily — white middle-class male in the office of the early ’80s, and expanded a certain worldview to the whole of the users around the globe, who have never seen or being in an office of that configuration before; in their own words:
“The Xerox Star interface was thus constructed on the basis of the users’ current universe, namely, the hierarchical model of the office. It was important to produce a “familiar” interface in order to reduce sources of friction, making the “user experience” seamless.”
In this context I argued that,
If we scrutinize the creation of virtual interfaces, we repeatedly register that they are nothing but a parody of social, contextual, historical constraints.
Forty years after Xerox
And we are entering a new leap in communicational dimensions; the broadening of available technology capable of providing immersive experiences pushes us towards a Web3 world, with both, decentralization of data production (exchange based on a blockchain), and an increasingly safer (more verifiable at least) environment for organizations to explore commercially. The popularization of higher processing capacity in individual devices allows for the implementation of otherwise unimaginable virtual relations. Thus, we come to the Metaverse. Needless to reinforce the eagerness of the Silicon Valley and Wall Street to dive into the capitalization over digital assets (NFTs), it comes the time that the administrative boards will turn their heads towards us, mere Experience Designers, and ask the 1 Million USD question: What is our business like in the Metaverse?
I argued that the UX Designers of the close future are more related to architects than to designers, that is, a user flow will now tend to be a user meta-physical flow rather than clicking through pages and pages. Pages will most probably become “stages’ (the nomenclature is still uncertain) and as we gain space as a new dimension of designing, it is unavoidable to use the real physical world as a reference. I guess you now see where it is going.
We can relate the current conundrum to that which the engineering team of Xerox faced in the early 80’s, while figuring out the first virtual interface, and standing by physical constraints as a paradigm for creation. Metaverse. In another essay, I organized the first thoughts on what would be the basis for a Metaversian UX, and came up with a simple list of principles that will probably guide the core concerns of Experience Design with immersive technologies.
- Metamorphism: We go from Skeuomorphism to Metamorphism.
- Localization: The interface is not in front of the user, but the user is inside your solution, and therefore, spatial navigation elements need to be created.
- Mechanization: Rules of mechanical physics from the visual dimension must apply.
- Dislocation: Virtual-physical movementent between scenes is something new and impacts narrativity, continuity, processes.
- Relations: Exchange of information through specific interfaces of contact.
- HUD: Visual cues that guide the experience on a personal level.
- Meta-Subjectivity: The whole spectrum of elements that interface interpersonal relations such as avatars, skins (digital fashion).
From these, the most important at this moment is the metamorphism. Returning to the beginning, the folding paper experience of a PDF, we need to raise fundamental design questions:
Are the efforts for familiarization a bad exchange in terms of allowing the full capabilities of a new medium to be realized? By using known physical parallels to ease adaptation, are we providing space for novelty in terms of trafficking information?
The engine to navigate PDF files as physical magazines reflects the same creative concerns as those of the Xerox engineers, and by making a metaphor of reality, produces a probable instant recognition that leads to the famous aspects of the theory of affordances in design by Don Norman (a later revised concept to “Perceived Affordance”). Originally proposed by J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal), the term in usability caught on with the publishing of “The Psychology Of Everyday Things” in 1988 and later The Design Of Everyday Things by Norman. The way the concept of Perceived Affordance is construed tends to focus on a circumstantial configuration that allows (Norman uses the term Allowance several times) for a certain relation of use. A handle has a grabability so to speak, and that is its Affordance according to J.J.Gibson. The virtual version of a handle should, in principle, provide similar Perceived Affordance, so we might think that the user would try to grab the handle and pull the page. The practical recognition through metaphor might speed up the learning curve, but it has a cost.
The cost of these metaphors is the lack of openness to novel capabilities of navigation.
Using the example of the digital handle (the scroll bar is one [Hinckley, K et al. Quantitative Analysis of Scrolling Techniques. CHI, 2002]), the mouse wheel or a simple swipe in touch screens render a digital-specific capability of navigation, and its adequacy. For most users, even those with trackpads, scrollbars are much more of visual cues of the length and position in navigation than grabable navigation elements. The practicality of a digital handle stands probably for scrolling long distances at once. But if the scrolling is excessive to this point, it is worth considering that the deliverance of information in this long-page format is inappropriate. Could it be better distributed, the navigation by means of digital-specific means would be absolutely adequate and provide better, faster, more enjoyable experience.
As we have seen, it is apparently common during these major technological shifts, for the industry to rely on cheap metaphors of physical constraints, and it will not be different in early Metaversian experiences; in parts due to the insecurity of a design universe with its own laws still to be created, and in parts for pure technological fetishism.
The parody of Metaversian cinemas
We have all been there; a friend comes up with a new tech, a VR that you put your phone in, and wear as a helmet. As cheap scenarios and other gimmicks for immersion go by, you are faced with a version of a stream app that imitates a cinema room, with all red chairs around you. It simulates the architectural features of a real cinema room, to stream video content on the digital screen it also simulates meta linguistically. But the real cinema room has its shape for practical purposes. It needs to provide protection from the environment, it needs a roof and walls as it is part of a bigger building, it needs lights, smoke detectors, a projection room. And although these elements became cultural tokens of a cinema experience, they are there for a practical reason.
The first metaversian cinemas will be provided with a parodic take on the real cinemas, with walls, chairs, projector lights and all. Even the projection screen, as the 16:9 rectangle with a 2D image within a 3D environment is a blatant technological parody. The capability of immersion on the end of the receiver, should instead fundamentally reshape the very core of the cinema industry, and instead of capturing scenes as flat images, movies should progressively become explorable environments with personalized narratives. The spectator is not outside the scene, she is within it. Set design, photography and even acting should be profoundly reconsidered to adapt to new possibilities of narrative experiences. And all these are tied to prior creation of a whole chain, from concept to educational institutions that comprise new models on the courses they offer, graduating a new generation of apt professionals that understand and explore the real possibilities of a newly created depth and complexity. After that however, “it seems unlikely that movie theaters will survive this virtually centered world”, as it affects the whole consumption chain, and real physical cinema spaces will probably become niche or museum artifacts.
We should ask ourselves: What would be like the completely new possibilities for immersive experience in Education instead of imitating a physical classroom. What could be done with entertainment, fairs, congresses, political debates, e-sports, shows, live streaming, gaming, health and so on?
Until then, what we will see in Metaversian ventures will be more cheap metaphors, and perhaps this must be the primary concern of Experience Designers as advocates of users; the real tradeoffs of shortening learning curves by creating parodies of reality. Behold the age of parodies.
