NOON App: VR mobile application

Overview

NOON VR app is the exclusive app for NOON VR headset. This app features VR real-time streaming, VR video player, and remote desktop service. With its intuitive UI, patented VR rendering engines, and advanced head tracking technology, NOON VR app provides a highly immersive VR experience to the users.

Situation

When we released this app in 2015, its primary function was just a universal VR video player. However, numerous features have been added to the app since then - including channel service (N-STAR), remote desktop, and others. It has been the company's top priority to cope with the update rapidly, and these new features were added as new menus at the hamburger button.

I proposed a new content-centered design to advance the app into the next level of VR platform. With the focus on improving the usability, I restructured the information architecture and constructed interface accordingly. The new interface expanded the boundary of a joyful VR experience.

Objective

To construct a user interface adapted to the VR environment to deliver major functions intuitively and streamline the steps to launch each function, providing a convenient VR video watching experience

To enable the users to focus on the variety of contents offered on the platform by eliminating decorative elements

Stakeholder Interviews

I interviewed 3 stakeholders on our team to learn about the pain points from their point of view, including how they use the features and what they have heard from our customers.

Sumin Nam

Manager, Marketing

"bothersome to go to the other pages"

Jaekyu Park

Director, Engineering

"Remote feature is unfamiliar for the users"

Seulki Lee

Customer Service

"Customers struggled to upload their videos with their smart phones"

Strategy 1: Strengthen tab bar

To get an intuitive user interface, I strengthened the function of the tab bar. Every menu was inside the hamburger button. It means when users want to see another page, it takes two steps. I put the main functions out of the hamburger button and placed them on the bottom tab bar. It shortened steps to go to another page. I also put channels and categories on the top so that users can have direct access to the functions with minimal steps.

When uploading video, it originally took 5 steps, and I streamlined it to 3 steps. At first, the company expected professionals who know VR videos would upload their 360 degrees videos, but it turned out ordinary people who took the videos with their smartphones uploaded 2-dimensional videos. As this is a mobile application, I focused on uploading videos from smartphones. I removed the fine-tuning steps on mobile and keep professionals can upload the VR videos via the desktop website.

Strategy 2: Streamline upload steps

Strategy 3: Visual guide for unfamiliar feature

Visual guide for unfamiliar featureWith the remote connection process, users can stream their PC screen to the VR headset screen. Users were not familiar with how to use and set-up this feature. I displayed a visual guide at the first approach. However, users tend to skin the guide at first.

The challenging thing was that I wanted to let the users know where the guide is. So I solved this issue by adding micro-interaction, that the guide screen scaling down and the info icon popping up. With this micro-interaction, users can recognize the location of the guide.