😄Introduction

Over the last several years, I've been working on Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) design. You don't have to look far in terms of developing for this technology as many publications, blog posts, conference talks, and industry applications can easily tell you how to get started. I hope this does justice to all of the references and resources I learned from over the years in order to make sense of designing for VR/AR.

I like the idea of this technology not just through utility, but through adaptation to human life. I feel like it's pretty easy to fall into the habit of not thinking about humans holisitcally, but VR/AR really forces a lot of us to think about people as whole beings with thoughts, patterns of behavior, feelings, and corporeal forms. Good virtual and augmented reality adapts to the diversity of humans as multifaceted, intersectional, and complex beings. We as designers have the opportunity (and the responsibility) for this new technology to be flexible and accessible to all of humankind.

In my time working in this space, I've often directed people to various resources that I've either studied or come across. I'm hoping with this write-up I can continue providing access to existing knowledge for those interested in knowing more. My goal with this project is to simply to help others find a key starting point to their interests, and also help with the myriad of questions related to VR/AR design. I don’t want to take any credit for the knowledge contained in this document, I merely collected it.

I stand by most of this content as a good framework to follow, but there are a lot of different schools of thought around VR/AR as an emerging (and also decades old) medium. If you want to skip to the repository section at the bottom, all of the sources I use can be found there.

Good luck, have fun! 😄

This is by no means a fully comprehensive document. Some sections are given far less context than they should, and (I'm sure) there are important topics I've completely left out. There are large gaps in my knowledge, and I can't tell you what I don't know!

Last Updated: July, 2022