E287 - Is Apple's Vision Pro the Future of Mixed Reality?

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: All right. Hello everybody. This is episode 287. We're recording this live on June 29th, 2023. This is Human Factors Cast. I'm your host, Nick Roam. Joined today by an esteemed panel of guests. We have Barry Kirby.

[00:00:16] Barry Kirby: Hello,

[00:00:17] Nick Roome: we have Brian McDonald.

[00:00:18] Brian McDonald: Hello everyone.

[00:00:20] Nick Roome: And Rose Figueroa.

[00:00:22] Rose Figueroa: Ola.

[00:00:23] Nick Roome: I am so happy to have all of you on.

In fact, this is Marks a big milestone for human factors cast. I'd just like to take a moment and pause and appreciate this for the first time in our seven year run, I guess six, seven years this is the first time that we've had a full panel of four people on during one of our normal shows. So thank you all for being here.

Really excited to talk to you all tonight. We'll be covering the Apple Vision Pro and we'll approach it from a human factors perspective. We'll also take questions from the community related to workplace struggles, that's fairly ambiguous. Essential UX stats and ethical considerations for UX researchers participating in research.

But first, we have some programming notes. I usually ask for this towards the end, but would you kindly give us a review? Tell your friends about us. And if you have the money and you want to support the show, just a buck gets you in the door with Patreon. All that stuff really helps. One more thing that I'll ask about is that we are starting our newsletter.

So if you have thoughts and opinions about what topics you'd enjoy in a quarterly newsletter, head over to our discord. Let us know what your thoughts are on that. We'd love to hear from you. B Barry, you do another podcast. You do 1202. What's going on over there?

[00:01:37] Barry Kirby: Oh, you should have, if I if only had realized you were gonna mention it then I might have had something prepared.

No, over in 1202, we are talk still talking artificial intelligence in hospitals with Kate Preston, friend of the show. She's been on with us in the past. And with AI all being, we, everyone's talking chat, g p t and all that sort of cool stuff. Kate is bit, her PhD is looking at how we can use AI in the health domain, specifically hospitals and how they can, how that AI can contribute.

However, a lot of the findings that she comes out with during our interview has got nothing to do with ai. Really. It's about the way that the organization of the health domain is actually stifling the adoption and development of technological and digital tools. So yeah, go down to and see what you think.

[00:02:17] Nick Roome: Good chat. All right. Why don't we get right into it.

That's right. This is the part of the show all about Hema Factors news. Barry, why don't you do the little reading of the blurb thing. Let us know

[00:02:27] Barry Kirby: what's up. I'll do the reading of the little blurb thing. So we're talking about Apple Vision Pro and here's everything you need to know. Apple has unveiled the Vision Pro, a new augmented reality or AR headset that both a host of advanced features and he's expected to deliver the seamless experience and elegant design that has come to typify the brand's products.

The Vision Pros two displays plus an external panel with 23 million pixels of raw. It also includes an IR and a lidar which is light detecting and ranging cameras and a dozen of other sensors. Meanwhile, the operating system for the AR headset Vision OS has been touted as the first OS designed from the ground up for spatial computing and shares, core components with Mac OS and iOS, but with visual processing optimized for the Vision Pro.

Users are ex expected to enjoy driving a range of apps from Adobe's Lightroom to Microsoft office. However, the drawback is gonna be the high price, which starts at, and this is starts at $3,499 higher, the most anticipated. There's an understatement. The headset is due to become available early next year.

Brian, are you ready to pay the big books for year to know the headset?

[00:03:39] Brian McDonald: I do vr, but for 3,500 I'm probably gonna pass. It's a mixed bag. It's like it's a huge step forward in refinement. It has really good vision. It has really good hand tracking. It's a step back in actual VR capabilities.

There's no haptics, there's no controllers, so you can't really play standard VR games. You don't get any tactile feel. It's like they're really focused on making a really like good relaxed 2D environment, theoretically in 3d. And I think they nailed that part, but it's too baby step for me.

Rose, what are your thoughts?

[00:04:19] Rose Figueroa: I was gonna say, like you saying that just reminded me the Jason Bourne movies, right? It's just, they're we're trying to go what what would. Sell or what people would maybe, I don't know if they were thinking like easing the people to it, may maybe have already been working on something up, the researchers in the backend.

But what we have right now, like you said, it just seems they have every iPhone that it's new on every year. So maybe I would just skip them to the next year's run in that sense.

[00:04:44] Nick Roome: So I, I think here I agree with both of you and I think the big question for me is, will this be the thing that kickstarts mainstream vr, xr, m r, whatever, will this be the thing? Because that's Apple's kind of been the trendsetter. Love it or hate it. I'm not an Apple person, but I respect that they set a lot of trends.

And so I'm wondering if this is going to be the big thing that sets off this this public acceptance of VR in our everyday lives. I think the price tag is a little bit prohibitive when it comes to that, but will future iterations drive that cost down? Apple fan boys will buy anything right now, and they are the ones that are going to essentially beta test this in a operational environment.

I don't know. To Brian's point, I think games and haptics might take a step back, but then you also have all those techies that are going to buy this regardless of the price tag. And will, will it pro proliferate? I don't know. Barry, what do you think?

[00:05:48] Barry Kirby: Is this just a pricey Oculus quest really? Or a quest to, for what it is?

Wait.

[00:05:54] Rose Figueroa: Cuz that's the point, right? Like they, the true getting, getting better.

[00:05:58] Barry Kirby: With, it's a good, for me, the, cause it's an xr type capability. So the design is interesting. It's fallen back on that whole skima type approach. I could almost see this being worn on an aircraft or a in a car, car by the kids probably a lot easier than some of the others that we've seen.

And because it's got that that pass through capability, then I can see it integrated with that sort of things a lot easier. I think also some. It sparked a few ideas for me around how you could maybe use something like this with autonomous vehicles. So if you are in your Tesla doing it's auto doing its auto drive thing, you chuck that on.

You can be doing whatever you wanna do, but then there's a, if you integrates properly, then actually when you need to be handed back control, it could possibly do that in a really good way. But I don't think that's got anything to do with this product as such. But it did inspire them ideas around how could that pass through HCI type of work.

From an Apple point of view, I, I do, I'm an Apple phone user, but I'm not an Apple Mac user, so I'm not a laptop user in that respect. I do like the way they do their mobile os for the general use case. Generally it's very reverse. Generally, it's you UserTest and so things don't break very often that give me a fair amount of confidence in what they've done.

But fundamentally, this feels like Googled lasts tomy it, they've took a product out there. What is it? What is the use case? What is it for? It, the kind of doing, so what Googled last did was throw the product out there and say what are you gonna use it for? How are you gonna make this cool and sexy?

And then it went away because everybody went I could use it for this, but yeah. I also could not and I feel that this might be there as well, that unless somebody actually grips it and. This is what we're gonna use for, this is the specific springboard use case that we're gonna go with, and that's cool.

We, we, and I just wanted to bring in something that I just found on socials just as we were going through this that a friend of mine, Bob Stone, so commented on we, we've complained about the price already, right? So three and a half thousand dollars is a lot of money. There's already a new version out there of the Apple Vision Pro CVR edition by caviar, $40,000.

But for that $40,000, you do get 18 karat gold. All, all over it and headband made from the legendary I'd never heard of before, but the legendary Cony leather, who is a supply to the British World Court in Rolls-Royce. So actually maybe in that 40,000 pound viewpoint, then three and a half thousand as much.

So that's the one you're gonna buy Barry? I'm gonna have two clearly, cause I'm gonna have one for everyday use. So one for one for show. Yeah,

[00:08:41] Nick Roome: yeah. Barry's getting the big podcast box, so he's got the, he's got the 40,000 look. So I wanna bring up a couple points here Barry, that I think that you talked about here.

You mentioned Apple Os and I think you, you also mentioned that you like how Apple does their mobile os and I think there's an important. Thing here for me is that they are developing an entirely different operating system for the headset, which leads me to believe that they're going to put a little bit more faith into it than they would, than Google did with Google Glass.

This is apple glass. Come on. And Apple's got the the sway. I think there are a couple points that I wanna highlight here is just about what does make this different than other headsets out there that are existing today is you mentioned, is this just another Oculus quest?

Is it, techno technologically, is it? Maybe, but I think the big thing here, what is different about it is it has the Apple name. I don't know, rose, you've used a lot of headsets. So what are you, what are your thoughts on this? I'm really curious on how this breaks down comparative to other headsets.

[00:09:45] Rose Figueroa: To be clear, I have not used this one, right? And that's one of the things that I was chatting with you is I want, I'm. I'm excited to get my hands dirty. I wouldn't pay for it. But if my employer wants to pay for it, for me to bring it in the comparison, I would not complain right now.

But it is what I've done a lot of the research kept, keep in mind that I would be seeing how it can be, all the headsets applied to forensics, how we can use, leverage this technology xr, MR whatever, to bring in the jury to the site, let's put it that way. So that's, think about it in the, in that sense.

So what I've been doing is a lot of understanding each headset and the capabilities and limitations of the technology because they can all be used. It's just depending on what type of case, which ones would you deploy? Like cameras. If I'm just going to document something, I could use my phone. Actually, like we were talking earlier, like the 14 pro, that is the one I have, it has lidar too.

I can scan on my phone that, with the 13, I could. So it's understanding the li the limitations and capabilities that I could potentially use. Like an example for this one. If you just wanna have an easily available for the jury that you can just have the, to the images that, for example, if I'm calibrated them, let's talk about a real case or like nighttime conspicuity where I calibrated the photos and calibrating them in my Mac.

So I know that the resolutions are, transferable. I can make sure that what they're seeing there is what I'm seeing on my screen. I can put them in this headset and now everybody's looking at the calibrated photos as I did, and I can attest that's what I saw when I went undocumented, yada yada.

So it, there are uses it's just to see again, like what, to what extent it could be a comparison to the Oculus, right? If it's worth the price, the difference, et cetera. And I think in May very, very broad, a good point. If we have That it integrates well with the phone, the Mac, right?

Like right now I have to bring my big PC connect, like very handy, to connect the headsets. But if now you're telling me like, oh no, you sent your phone and you're good to go. You're showing the photos that's it could be really good. So it would all depend on seeing how, like the add-ons, how it's integrating with their systems.

Apple has done a good job, right? The Apple TV and all these things that you go at your house. So if they integrate this part of the, like the bigger ecosystem I mean I might buy in at some point and would be my go-to.

[00:12:10] Barry Kirby: That's a really good point, isn't it? Cause it is, it's still early, it's early adopted technology here.

So we are not, it isn't mainstream, it's still expensive. It's still an early buying piece. Some of the technology I think is, just the usability or the wearability of some of it. So they have thought, they have learned from some of the other headsets out there. So they've got the fans in place to keep it cool.

The thought about the balance and the battery pack, I believe isn't actually helmet mounted. That's actually elsewhere. So that could be pro orcon depending on how the balance of the headset works. And they've got the down so they it can see your hands and therefore you can, got an element of using them as controller.

So it does, they have learned from potential from other. Platforms out there. But it's still, yeah, it's still, it is still gonna be a niche product until it get, until I guess, until it become until it isn't. Cause one, one criticism I got of Apple's stuff is that you can buy stuff early doors, but it some point the updates of thes will just brick whatever it, the early technology.

And if you've splashed out the big books on this, particularly if you've that 40,000 pound gold version and it bricks it at some point you're gonna be pretty upset. But I'm guessing it's more focused at early adopters, technology developers who can then crack on with that. Brian, what are your thoughts on this and how you would use it on a, I guess on a day-to-day basis?

[00:13:33] Brian McDonald: Yeah, no, it's really interesting because it is pretty similar to the Oculus quest in a lot of ways, but it's also fundamentally different in that the way it has the screen resolution. Allows you to actually use it as like a second screen. Whereas I tried to do that on my quest and it was awful.

There's no way you could get that done. Way too blurry. But I've heard the Apple headset, you might actually be able to, it might have that good enough resolution where you can use it as productivity device. Of course, it also doesn't have controllers, so you wanna play your cool VR games, get a different headset, save $3,000.

So I think it's really different use cases. I've actually been traveling a lot recently and if this came out a year ago, I probably would buy it assuming it integrates well with my MacBook and I can use it as extra screens opposed to me carrying an extra screen in my luggage all the time, which is what I currently do.

That'd be a huge win.

[00:14:29] Nick Roome: There's a couple elements here I'm picking up on. I think that is Apple's intent, and I want your thoughts on this, everybody. So I think one of the big things that I am sensing from Apple here is that this is a social VR device, xr, mr. This is a social extended reality device that they, that's their focus here.

If you think about it, there's a couple key features here that they are that they are. Highlighting in their presentation materials that make me think this. So the first thing obviously is this this I, what is it called? The through site where basically, yeah so you can see other people.

So if you are outside of this device looking at somebody wearing this device, you are able to see their eyes through this screen. And so I think that is one social piece of it because then you can tell whether or not they're looking at you. A lot of human communication is eye contact. I'm looking at each one of you in the eyes as I'm talking to you, although I'm not looking right at the camera, I'm looking at you on my screen so it doesn't quite map as well.

But if I'm looking here at the camera, this is more effective in communicating than it would be if I were to look at my screen with my notes and everything that I wanna say. But the other things here that, that are important, and I will look at my notes here for this, are that they are making this other.

This other claim that there's a 3D avatar of you that you are then going to be able to project into other apps like teams, WebEx, zoom, all these other things where your avatar is then it uses the the eye scanning technology to look at where you're looking and it will then project that onto your avatar.

And so it looks as if you are not wearing a headset when you actually are. And I think to your point, Brian, about this being a productivity device, I think that is, One of the biggest barriers is that if you are wearing a headset as a productivity device, you can't necessarily see that person, what they're looking at, and have that eye contact communication that is so important.

And so I think these are some of the key aspects that I'm picking up on, that they're actually gearing this as a social VR Mr. XR device that will allow you to still interact with other people around you. Because the other, the last thing that I'll say about this is that there's this other aspect of it that when you are using VR mode in that your eyes are completely occluded by the screen, when somebody comes within view, you'll be able to see them inside.

So you'll know that when others are present and nearby, yes, they'll interfere with whatever VR thing that you're looking at in that moment. And there've been plenty of jokes about them. I'm not going to relay them here, but. When somebody comes in that view, you'll be able to see there's somebody else around you and thus not excluding you from social interaction.

I think all these elements together really paint a clear picture to me that Apple is looking to make this a more social device. What are your thoughts everyone? I'm gonna throw it to everyone. Yeah,

[00:17:36] Brian McDonald: I think that's exactly it. If you look at what they released, we've been talking about VR and AR and they have been talking about AR and their Vision Pro.

They haven't mentioned the word VR at all, which I think is very intentional. They wanna make this a augmented reality device, even though it really is VR with really good pass through. Does that count? I don't know, but I do think they really are trying to make it social, so I do wonder if those 3D personas pass the uncanny valley.

Are they still not quite there? It'll be interesting to see for sure.

Yeah. I

[00:18:14] Rose Figueroa: think that, that's an important point that when you were mentioning the see through as well and picking up on Brian's, right? If, now imagine that, have you ever played with a VR in a room where whatever that person is playing you can, you feel that you're isolated from that person?

You stay away. You don't want 'em to hit you if they're playing something with swords, for example, that's another story. But it feels like it's the person and the rest. And with this type of technology now, at least, like the, you're being able to see them. It's exactly, you're exactly right.

I think they're going on that road, that it's adding the social aspects, like you're still, now, even if one person is using them, I think of course they're hoping that everybody's using them. Then you can still talk and it's like a conversation piece, which then that would bring in the. We're already distracted when we're in a room with other people on our phones.

Imagine now that you literally have it on your face and you could just be like, sure, I'm listening to you and you have something else. So that may bring other components that in the social aspect that we have not explored though.

[00:19:15] Barry Kirby: That is cause I went the other way with it that I wasn't entirely con, I've never been convinced that the that wearing a headset, no matter what happens to it, can make you socially interact with people in the same room.

The biggest issue I've had so far is when you are, I, because when you put the headset on, it's there to immerse you in something. And. The biggest thing I don't like is you put this on and then somebody sneaks in the room behind you and pokes you in the back or something like that and you then lose complete trust with what's going on because you can't see now that's where I think this will help to a certain extent.

Cause when somebody becomes near, then you'll know that they're gonna come and try and play a prank on you. Fine. But when you then try and engage with them people, no matter what sort of pass through you've got, you're, it's always gonna be artificial. So I do think that the, but I do think they are growing the fact that two people wearing them or community people wearing them will make that interaction better.

Cuz that's with the Oculus stuff at the moment. And not ubiquitously, but it is still a very almost lonely experience in doing it. You are generally driving it on your own or you're using that capability throughout. Obviously there's games and things out there to do more collaborative stuff.

I've. Unless I'm working with, re people and reasons why I cannot actually interact with them have a face-to-face meeting with them. I've never found them truly a good second place to do that sort of stuff. I'm really interested in the things like you were saying, rose, in terms of being able to replicate an environment, being able to make sure that they can see what you can see about enhancing what you are seeing.

I've seen it used for design. I've seen it used for all that sort of stuff. That's brilliant. I love it. I, and I would have it tomorrow. But I think for me we keep on trying to make it what it's not. We're tr we're trying to get it. So it's almost, is it Emperor's new clothes? So we're trying to pretend that it's not there.

We can make you see through it. We can, you can see their eyes, you can see this. He's yes, but you've still got a massive hun of plastic, metal and electronics stuck to the front of your face. That's not eye to eye contact. How do we, is there ever going to be a future where we either, everybody's wearing it, so a bit like, what's the f already player won?

Everybody's wearing it, therefore that's absolutely fine. Everybody's used to it. It's just day-to-day stuff, or is it always going to be the play thing of the rich? I don't know. What do you folks think?

[00:21:36] Nick Roome: I wanna jump in here. Mention briefly. I think it's fairly obvious, but I wanna mention briefly that we actually don't have access to this device. We, yeah, we, I said it already. I'm Wait hand comments? Yeah. We are making comments based on reporting and I do wanna bring another side to this reporting. You go and look at some of the testimonials of folks who have used this and I see an overwhelmingly positive response to the device.

Just to read off a couple headlines here. I used Apple Visions Pro and it's Apple. It's absolutely mind blowing and mind-blowingly impressive. I wore the Apple Vision Pro. It's the best headset demo ever. First impressions, yes. The Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it's comfortable. So look, apple can pay for these to be sponsored and higher in the search results, but it's also Google that I'm searching and so But for what use, but, exactly. Exactly. There's another here article, people Lost for Words reacting to Apple Vision Pro. But again, you also have other things like the use case Rose. I was actually getting right to that. The Apple Vision Pro. Great. But who's gonna buy it? And we're, I think, so we were talking

[00:22:49] Rose Figueroa: earlier, like the potential topics in for next week, the socioeconomic status, right?

Barry was saying like, is this the thing that is gonna come and everybody's gonna use it? Not all these people can. There's two, two things on headsets, right? A lot of people talk about price, which is what we're talking about here. What else is the space needed, right? There's a lot of headsets that you need a big space with nothing, obstacles and whatnot.

And not everybody has a bigger house. Not everybody can afford to have that space for whenever I wanna use a headset for school. What, because it will be, it will become the thing that everybody has, it will become another tool for school that not everybody may be able to afford. So it's it brings other aspects to it too.

Would they be willing to at some point, optimize the redesigns so they're reducing the price? Are there. Waving or giving people the access, based on how much you can pay. Like how would we get there that everybody can actually have it. Like very, so it's like second nature and we don't care that you have that big thing.

But we are outside, we wear shades a lot of times. Like you're not seeing the eyes of people. We get used to it. It's just how, what are we gonna do? One, to get used to it, but two, that it is accessible for everybody so that when, you know how Barry was commanding that it's not just for the people that will have money for it.

[00:24:05] Brian McDonald: Half the people here wearing glasses anyway. I do think it'll be a lot like cell phones in that it is, Always gonna be a bit of disparity, but they're also a lot more ubiquitous now than, when I was growing up. And they're a lot better for what you get. You don't need to spend as much to get a much better one.

So I do think like eventually it will come down. We're just really early stages.

[00:24:28] Barry Kirby: Yeah. And I think that's true, but I think to go back to your comments, Nick, about the reviews when I first put on, what was the first one? The PlayStation headset on? I'm a massive fan of Beat Say, but I think it's one of the best games ever.

Just because, so I used to be a, massive fan of Nintendo Wii just that Nick. Yeah. When I first played that on the PlayStation headset and it's got wires everywhere, blah, blah, blah, and I thought it was the best thing ever. I was wowed. Fantastic. We then move forward. I've got the Oculus Quest two, and I put that on, I was wowed.

It was brilliant. Best thing ever. Because the technology has moved on. That's fantastic. And I'm I appreciate the technology and I'm, I've got no doubt that if I'd put this headset on, which I would've done, if Apple had sent one to review prior to the recording of this, I absolutely would've done. But they refused or just didn't respond.

But no I think if I put it on, it's impressive, we'll put it on. We will be wowed. There is no doubt about that whatsoever.

[00:25:28] Rose Figueroa: But what you, to, what

[00:25:29] Barry Kirby: you, so my oc, like I said, my Oculus quest, we bought one. I wanted to use it for some work stuff. And I like playing on it.

There was like all sorts of things I was using for, to get fit and all that sort of stuff. It's now sat in a bag at the end of my desk, probably now for the best part of seven months. Because I've had no comp. The other thing. That you need to do and Rose, you're absolutely spot on with this.

You have to have the space to use it. We struggle, A lot of people struggle to have you to have a home office at the moment, because of the pandemic everybody had to create their workspace at home, et cetera, et cetera. Does this mean now that new houses almost need to be built with that, that cavern that we need to use for vr?

Because I u you know, when I was using it said in, in the bedroom space, my bedroom floor isn't the tidiest of things. You're falling over all sorts of things as you're playing. And so yeah, you are, we gonna have to create these sort of spaces, which is not ju then just the economic inequity of bit of having to buy the device, but actually to have the space to use it efficiently and safely as well.

[00:26:27] Nick Roome: Two thoughts here. I wanna jump in. Barry, I am glad you brought that point up because that's what I was going to end that discussion with is yes, we'd all be wowed if we put this thing on. And that's the reactions that a lot of people were giving. And I will say there is a trend for those accounts or those influencers, those reviewers, the closer they are to.

Sort of VR Mr Headset exclusive content, the more critical, the more grounded that those reactions start to become. And so you'll see that there's probably a lot more kinda sticking points to traditional headsets that you might have with the Vision Pro. Yes, it's a great device. Yes, it can do a lot of these things very well.

But again, like you said, Barry, your quest is where in a bag, mine is under my desk and it has been for months. And I'm a VR enthusiast. And so yes, there's still that use case that needs to be solved. Now to the second point that I'll make is with respect to the inequality and sort of the space required to use one of these, I think it depends on the use case.

This could if you were to use it for office productivity, as Brian and I were talking about earlier, this could actually be a great thing because now instead of one screen, You send somebody a Mac and a headset and now they have infinite screens that they can work with in a smaller confined space. I have three monitors in front of me, actually four, if you count another PC here.

So I have I have four monitors in front of me and I use each of those for different things throughout my day. But if I had. A headset on and I could mount my clock over here, so that way I'm always looking at my clock and calendar right there. It's off to the side. I mount my email up above front and center right there.

It's always there. Never gonna move. I use, the primary space in front of me as a workspace. I use this for meetings and I use this for other secondary information that I need up. And then, oh, by the way, I have a tab open on another thing, but I don't wanna I want it up for reference, like maybe a table with conversion charts or something along those lines.

I can just set that right up there. Something that I'm not using all the time, but it's nice to have. And then, oh, by the way, my clock calendar over here, maybe as an alarm comes up, it can come right in front of me and say, oh, you have a meeting. And those types of things in a, in an office productivity type of environment I see is a really useful use case.

And Yes, inequality. We may not be able to afford this, but if companies, tech companies can provide it for their employees and give them a workspace that is specifically molded to their environments in which they are working, you might actually see an increase in productivity across workers that, you don't necessarily need a full office space.

You could actually mount these digital screens like three feet in front of you. And you could almost like do a, do an area capture of your home. And you don't have cats and children and your significant other running around in the background, but you're sitting there and you see everything.

And when they get close enough, you see them. But you, so I'm saying like there's a lot here that you could work with in that type of use case scenario for traditional VR for games. I don't think this is it. So I just wanted to make that point. Where were we going? I do have a friend. Forgot.

Sorry.

[00:29:50] Rose Figueroa: Yeah, go ahead. That up. It may be because I'm actually currently working on a course for product safety and ergonomics, and as I see him just doing that, I'm just here I'm hoping that we know we are talking about it and we have not been touched it. We, I'm hoping the researchers from Apple are looking out there is that is a foreseeable use, right?

So I hope that they're trying to assess that now the ergonomics aspects of it. Are they gonna tell you like, yo, you're putting that too high if you're gonna planning on be looking at that 20 times a day, that's not a good idea because the average user knows not gonna know that. Yes. If I'm looking at that high, my clock is there 20 times a day and you know that's gonna bring issues that it will be from the product.

Now they cannot just say oh, but that was a person pointing it there. You could have said no, that, that's not a good idea there. I've seen you, like looking at that X many times, you know what, there's, there may be a lot of stats in the backend, right? Like they could do that. So throwing it out there, ergonomics will be a thing depending on the use.

And I'm not sure to what extent they would be looking into it.

[00:30:56] Barry Kirby: I'd just take that a step further as well. Cause the, we know that's been sat at a desk and staring at screens for a whole bunch of time is not great. And we. Push, whatever, either the 20 20 20 rule or the, staring off into space every, whatever, what whatever's the most appropriate to whatever you're doing.

If you've constantly wearing this device, how are you going, how are we going to encourage people to go and take that quick break to go and walk away from the desk if it's plastered to your face? Cause that means, and it sounds whimsical, but actually taking that off and then becoming immersed, then coming back to it, putting it back on again, getting it all set up, becoming immersed again.

That that's not trivial. Compared to se sitting at your desk with a couple of screens in front of you. Is that, is it, so there's two risks here. One is that it isn't as effective because of the donning and doffing of the of the device. But secondly, is it, could it actually be a health and safety risk?

Where you are not, where you are not getting the ire, the I rest that you need the brain rest and things like that because it's constantly plastered to your face. Brian, do you see any risks with

[00:32:04] Brian McDonald: Yeah, I mean I think that's very clearly is unfortunately yes. Because I've watched videos of people who like, were in a VR headset for 24 hours and like they ended up seeing like the world through essentially like a window screen for a little bit because their eyes got used to that.

And I don't think anyone's truly solved the like convergence accommodation conflict where you're always looking at six feet away even though when you're not, so your eyes can get tired and totally fine for a small bit of time, but eight hours a day. I think it's good that battery life is currently only two hours right now.

[00:32:40] Barry Kirby: But you can plug it into the wall oh yeah, that's true.

[00:32:42] Brian McDonald: Cool.

[00:32:43] Barry Kirby: Wrong. So this, so now you're tethered as well. Brilliant.

[00:32:46] Rose Figueroa: The heat, sometimes when your computer is connected, like it's gets hotter. Like it's, it's I was commenting also to your point on the, like the six feet away and whatnot, I was joking.

I think I actually started seeing memes about that too, where my parents at these Latinos, I don't know about you guys, but it's don't sit right next to the tv. You're gonna be in front of the tv. You're gonna be in front, look, get away. And now we have the screens right on our faces and that is where we're going.

[00:33:11] Nick Roome: I'd love to sit here and chat about this all day. So let's just do one more round on final thoughts on the Vision Pro. We'll start with you, Brian.

[00:33:20] Brian McDonald: Sure. It's pretty cool that Apple's kind of now into the spatial computing game. I think it's a really interesting first step and it will drag some people

[00:33:29] Nick Roome: in, which is nice.

Rose, final thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro? I think it has

[00:33:34] Rose Figueroa: potential, especially how they, how been proven to be good in integrating their devices. So I'm looking forward on that. It looks cool.

[00:33:44] Nick Roome: Barry, final thoughts?

[00:33:46] Barry Kirby: Similar. I'd, I think it will, I think if anybody can make this mainstream then Apple is the company to do it. They've got the background to do it. They know how to do this stuff to make us, not, to make us desire things that we didn't actually realize that we truly needed and make them, not only functional, but desirable a fashion statement.

So I think the. I think they are the people to make this happen. I think there is gonna be price issues, but then it's early days fine with that. But it'll be interesting to see when we come back to this in maybe 12, 18 months time with the cheaper version. And seeing what that does and just seeing how much the technology is bounded on in a short period of time.

[00:34:27] Nick Roome: For me I really hope this is the thing that makes mainstream vr mainstream vr I think the social aspect of it is very interesting to me, and I'm very curious to see how the public adopts this thing, especially if it is geared as a social mixed reality, extended reality device. And I'm hopeful.

I know we brought up a lot of questions and a lot of sort of critical points about this, and it's easy to do that with headsets, but I really do hope that Apple is the one that. Brings it over that line and makes it accessible. All right, with that being said let's go ahead and just thank you to our friends over at thank you to our patrons and everybody for selecting our topic this week.

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Alright, we got three up tonight everybody. This first one here struggling to see the point of my job. This is by user UX Anonymous on the UX research subreddit. They write, how can I better understand my role as a researcher in product design? And what should I do if I'm unsure about my job responsibilities and the decision making process?

Rose, I'm gonna start this off with you. What do you think this person should do?

I dunno

what

[00:37:26] Rose Figueroa: I did there, but my mute button disappeared. I'm back. So this is interesting. I actually have workshops that I've given because of like the mentoring and all the, all this ang, but what I would just say, one of the big things that have helped it, it's leveraging the network, right?

Like you are having or looking for networks of people that either look like you or that there's a lot, like I gave an example, one example is I'm Latina. That's, and there's like this lack of over like 40,000 Latinos in tech. And there is actually a channel literally of people that can pose this, these questions right there anonymously and everybody comments and help them.

You create network, you can have people that have been through that ESP and even the same community, the same domain or different domains that you can extrapolate and extrapolate from. So it's just the network can be important. Getting different perspectives. Sometimes you think that you don't know what are my job responsibilities?

Like? You can also create your own goals, but for that you need to understand what is your job overall, right? Like at UX you're usually actually helping other teams, so learn what they're doing and how can you help them and make the case of what can that become now part of your job responsibilities as well.

So there's, that's the communication piece. Deliver, leveraging the network managers, peers, et cetera, people from all levels. And that can help, build your goals and, going on that route. I'm not Brian, thoughts all day about that.

[00:38:50] Nick Roome: Yeah. Bye. Thank you Ro Brian? What are your thoughts on this?

[00:38:54] Brian McDonald: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Just thinking about networks. UX p a is like everywhere. UX P A, Boston have been to a million of their events and it's really nice just be able to talk to those peers. I think the thing here is to me, your job is like to be the expert. Like they might think, oh, NPS is data, it's a number and But is that truly the best metric?

You probably know what the best metric is, much better than they do. So you can have those conversations guided that way. Every team is different, but ask your coworkers what they need and particularly what do they care about? And then you can figure out ways to help that way. Every team is a little different but know the most about research.

So how do you get to the best decision possible? How do you get them closer?

[00:39:40] Barry Kirby: Barry, what are your thoughts? I think you two are very nice people, and I'm going to be slightly more brutal in that. If you are in a job as a researcher and you don't understand what it is, how just how are you even in the right job?

There is an element of you've got to do. You there's a certain amount of almost. Personal responsibility here to make sure that you are doing what the sort of stuff that you want to be doing. And if you don't know your job responsibilities when you took the job either way, it's easy to get into a job and not understand necessarily the full extent of what you've gotta be doing.

That's, cuz every job is individual whilst we understand the call. But this really feels like your, you role at scene. You don't actually know what you're supposed to be doing. And I wonder just how you got there, how you are you doing what it is that you think you should be doing?

So I think you need to be slightly more introspective to a certain extent and find out what, what makes you tick it. And if this, if the job that you are doing despite what you think it is or what you think the responsibilities are, et cetera. If it's not doing it for you, are you right in the right place to begin with?

Nick, am I too brutal? Or are you with me?

[00:40:48] Nick Roome: You all are very nice people. No I'm right with you. Very I like my comments here. Who let you in the door? And I think the answer to this is just how do you better understand your role as a researcher, research it, research your role like that?

To me, it is one of those things where it's like, it, maybe this isn't cut out. Maybe you weren't cut out for this. I had hope that whoever hired you understood your level of expertise and would hire you for the appropriate level. This seems like a junior question to me where somebody just doesn't know how to push back against PMs and doesn't know how to establish clear boundaries within the roles that they are trying to, and look, it's always a, it's never a cake walk.

It's always hard. It's always hard to establish boundaries, but I, those are fights that you need to have internally and it's all outta respect for whatever the product is that you're building. So I think when you have this conflict where somebody else might be stepping on your toes, talk to them about it.

And if you can't have a discussion with them about it, talk to your supervisor or your manager and have them help you walk through that mediation. It doesn't need to be an awkward conversation just to need to say, Hey, this is, traditionally the role that a researcher would take in this type of environment.

And I don't know have the conversations. It's tough, but have them. Yeah.

[00:42:14] Brian McDonald: One last thought, Nick. I do think this is a very common thing for people early in their career, cuz there's a lot of things where oh, textbook says I should be doing this, but I get here and no one listens to me.

But that's again, like part of your job is communicating what you do to other people. Cool. And that is just super essential how you get to the next steps,

[00:42:36] Nick Roome: right? Said. All right, let's get into this next one here. This next one is from UX Stats you can't live Without, from user rap and Green Rhapsody in Green on the user experience subreddit, they write, what are your favorite UX related stats and why do you find them relevant?

Rose, what are your what are your thoughts?

[00:42:59] Rose Figueroa: That's still one of yours, but I promise I was thinking about that. One wishes the tax, the expectancy, the, like the pre and post and things like that. And it may be because I didn't read that question, so I'm stealing your answer. Now I have not looked lately given like from the UX perspective, given that I'm more in the like physical ergo and human factors.

So I am much interested in seeing what you guys have to say.

And that's

[00:43:27] Nick Roome: my dog. Hello dog. Brian, what are your thoughts?

[00:43:30] Brian McDonald: Yeah, so I'm a designer who always has to do our own research because we don't have any UX researchers at my company. Yay. It's me. So for me, one of the classic that we always talk about in grad school was, five users find 85% of your problems.

Just just having a few users is immensely helpful. And technically it's with five users you'll observe 85% of usability issues have probability of occurring like 30%. So essentially it's just like your severe ones. You're not gonna find all of them, but you'll find all the showstoppers. And that's always really helpful.

Just five and you can do a lot Barry.

[00:44:07] Barry Kirby: Mine, I guess I'm not strictly ux, so mine is slightly broader than that. I'm quite fond of the eight 80 80 20 rule. So you basically get 80% of the functionality doing done, and that will get you mostly there. The last 20% will take you forever, so just ditch it.

It's not that important. Doesn't always work in safety critical systems, but hey we'll just lost over that. What I'd like, I, I always pulling out just from that is the whole seven plus or minus two when you are developing interfaces and the amount of memory you can do, I remember that was one of the earliest things I was taught in my, for, in my degree.

And it's the thing that's always stuck with me and I've always tried to break it. Because I, it can't be it can't be that simple. And look, we, I've done this in lesson, et cetera, et cetera, but it, it's one of these things that is not really bolted, in fact, but actually holds true quite a lot.

So I quite like it. Nick, what about you? What's your your ex stats that you just live with and have pinned up on your monitor?

[00:44:59] Nick Roome: Oh, this is really interesting because I think half of us interpreted this as what stats do you run versus what stats about UX are interesting. So I just found that an interesting little observation there.

For me, I interpreted this as what stats do I run? And one of the most helpful things for me is as Rose was alluding to the task expectancy, pre-task and post task, because then you can you can plot a quadrant of where their expectations were versus where. The difficulty actually lied.

And that quadrant is really important for triaging some of the issues. So if you're like running them through a usability test and you have them, they expect it to be really difficult and it actually was really difficult, then you need to solve that. And if they expected it to be super easy and it actually was really difficult, then that is something that you really need to address.

But the things that they expected to be super difficult but were actually super easy, that's marketing material baby, let's go. And so that is a super awesome graph because it applies to many different things that they're doing and you can almost apply it in any scenario. So that's my 2 cents.

Alright, let's move on to this last one here. This is participating in research when you are a UX researcher is Ethical. This is by user Icy Nerve 47 60 on the UX research subreddit. They write as a UX researcher, is it ethical to participate? In UX research studies, should I avoid participating altogether?

Rose, what are your thoughts on this one? I thought that was an interesting one.

[00:46:27] Rose Figueroa: The short answer is you can, is just do it correctly. Either is it because it's a pilot? And of course, you know how many times we just ask our friends first to get that an a sense and idea and our friends maybe be from our single, hey that our ux, so it I just saw that more as, again, remember I come from a lot of the forensics, accident investigation attorneys, right?

Avoid any of conflict of interest though, or if you know too much of it. So we are all ux, but ux, human factors or genomics, it's pretty broad. You could be in this domain and you don't know anything about, like some people are doing on specific, do like those stream. So you can participate in that.

The, that research, you're not gonna be biased, it's just about making sure you're providing avoiding conflict. And if there's any for some reason, but you think it's not gonna sway your opinions, at least disclose it. And then when you disclose that, everybody agrees, it's fine.

[00:47:18] Brian McDonald: Brian? Yeah, I think even more expansive, like you do have to be upfront about it. But kinda let the other researcher decide what is and isn't appropriate. Personally with I'm running tests, I'd love to get a cheap UX professional looking at my work. But I wanna know about it so I can then triage their comments cuz they're not my typical users.

So they're gonna have some really important points, but not the typical ones. So just let them make the call. Very what's your

[00:47:45] Barry Kirby: thoughts? So similar, I guess in, in many respects. So as long as it's not your study, then yeah, go for it. You've gotta be honest though, and I find myself guilty of this in some time.

Do you try and read into the questionnaire design or the interaction design? So you are almost trying to get, rather than just. Providing an honest result and of of the gut result. And so can you almost overthink your response to it? Then there's slight flip side of thought about if you are actually, if you came across some of this and somebody was doing, that you got stopped in the street or something to take part in this and you were co you were part of a team developing a counter product or a competitive competitor product, there's an opportunity for sabotage.

There's an opportunity for you to actually skew their results. And we've all played, we've all very nice people and you guys are all very nice and that's great. But if I come across this, would I be able to stop the temptation of making, having the opportunity to make my product look better?

I don't know. I'd like to think I would, I'd be a very nice person about it. But you never know. Nick, what about you? Would you, would, you would, do you think we, we the best and nice people all the time.

[00:48:55] Nick Roome: No, we're not the best of nice people every time. But I think, I believe that outside of any other circumstances, like you've mentioned, either we're working on the product ourselves or we're working on a similar product or we're doing it for a competitor.

I think we are the best person to do this. And the reason is we know how to provide feedback in a way that will be help, that will help the end UX researcher the other end or the human factors person at the other end of this. Because we can we know what think aloud protocol is. We know the methodology that they're doing, and yes, there is this intrinsic need to I don't know, deconstruct what what things they're doing behind the scenes. But at the same time, like if you just take a lot of the questions at face value and you're just like, okay, here's, you wanna know the answer to this, here's the answer to this, and I'll tell you the answer to it, but I'll also give you reasons behind it and I'll give you sort of everything that you're looking for with it.

I think I think that's, from my perspective, we're the best people to do it if we, provided everything else is taken into account,

[00:50:06] Brian McDonald: and that's exactly why I'm letting you in my sessions all the time. I'm just also putting a little tag, not

[00:50:11] Nick Roome: typical. There you go. Quite verish,

[00:50:13] Rose Figueroa: right? Like you can, the words that they're looking for that would actually move forward. So it's important as

[00:50:18] Nick Roome: well. Yeah. You can speak product in a lot of cases too, which, which can speak volumes to actual product when you're trying to translate what users are saying to product.

So that's also really helpful. All right, let's just get into this last part of the show. One more thing. It needs, it's just where we talk about One more thing. Brian, what's your one more thing this week? Yeah.

[00:50:40] Brian McDonald: So keep in on the spatial computing theme. Recently just for like random design fund, I've been using this web tool bezel.

It's not the most powerful, but it's pretty good for rough prototyping. You can make loose interactions, you can look at through a quest. It's way easier than blender and unity, though. Way less powerful. So that's my thing. Rose,

[00:51:03] Rose Figueroa: Just random cuz we were, I see all the social media and whatnot, so I just wanted to leave a run.

One more thing, comment given that I'm always social media, if you seen me LinkedIn, but I have not gotten into TikTok or Twitter, which is weird given that I'm always trying to see and testing how people would react, how you could leverage those tools and reach and whatnot. So it's, I wanted to share that, which is weird.

[00:51:26] Barry Kirby: Fair enough. For me this week, so last Friday, I was looking enough to host the C I H F annual awards. And it was all remote and it was a weird, surreal experience to a certain extent. So we had fantastic finalists, we had amazing winners and all that sort of stuff, but I was sat here in my tuxedo, we remember, and I had my glass of champagne, Owen my glass of Prosecco and all that sort of stuff.

And it was such a weird dynamic to go from drinking a glass champagne and congratulate the winners to then going back in the house. I was lucky cause I, my family did say you only need to put the jacket, shirt and bow tie on. You could just be in your pants. It'd be fine. Nobody'd ever know.

And I was like no, I think there's gotta be a bit of decorum here. So I made sure I had my proper trials on as well, but I was wearing Crocs. And it was also really hot. And so just the whole sensation, the whole thing was something I think having a remote award ceremony can be quite good because, more people can attend and do all that sort of stuff remotely, but there is something quite nice about having a stage there, having everybody in the room having an atmosphere.

And I don't know, my jury's out at the moment. It'll be interesting to see when we discuss it as part of the the tea, the team afterwards. We've done the remote, we did the remote rewards cause of covid and all that sort of stuff. Whether we do it remote again next year, I jury's still out, but it was a good chance to drink a bottle of Prosecco when nobody could actually steal it from me.

Nick, what about you? What's your one more thing?

[00:52:53] Nick Roome: Okay, so a couple weeks ago I mentioned that I was overwhelmed by a new game that came out, tears of the Kingdom Zelda, and I finally got over that that hump, whatever it is that was just intimidating to me, and now I'm hooked. So if you wanna talk about Zelda, let me know.

Happy to do it. But that's it for today, everyone. If you like this episode, enjoy some of the discussion about virtual reality. I'll encourage you to go listen to episode 2 46, 1 of our most popular episodes. Let's kiss in vr comment wherever you're listening with what you think of the story This week for more in-depth discussion, you can always join us on our Discord community, visit our official website, sign up for our newsletters, say up to date with all the latest human factors news.

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And just a buck gets you in the door. As always links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode. I wanna thank my panelists for being here. Thank you for making this a four person show. This is awesome. Rose, where can our listeners go and find you if they wanna talk about your work or Apple headsets?

[00:54:14] Rose Figueroa: LinkedIn. I think it's I, whenever I have a chance, I respond back. I promise if you send me a pm, but we can connect on Instagram, but Instagram is more like my leisure travel personal side. But it's fun because I've been at this, I like, I think I was in Turkey three weeks ago. I go I've been into like 45 countries.

So you can see and ask for advice if you wanna go somewhere.

[00:54:37] Nick Roome: Awesome. Hey Brian, where can our listeners go and find you if they wanna figure out where they can sign up to be a test participant in one of your studies?

[00:54:44] Brian McDonald: Most of the things will be on LinkedIn and Twitter, and I am pretty much Brian C.

McDonald everywhere because I have a very generic name.

[00:54:53] Nick Roome: And Mr. Barry Kirby, where can our listeners go and find you if they wanna figure out where you're getting all that money to afford that Apple headset that's made of 18 karat gold?

[00:55:02] Barry Kirby: Once you work out that all my that the money that Nick pays me for coming on this podcast that then pays for all of my gadgets, then you, we can go and talk about how you can also get a slice of that pie if you find me on Twitter, another social media at Bazel Disco K, or if you want to come and listen to interesting interviews with people around the human factors domain, then find me Atw 1202, the Human Factors podcast at two podcast

[00:55:22] Nick Roome: com.

As for me, I've been your host, Nick Rome. You can find me on our discord and across social media at Nick underscore Rome. Thanks again for tuning into human factors Cast. Stick around for the post show if you're watching live until next time. It depends. Depends.