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     Q&A with Leap Motion CTO David Holz in AltspaceVR 

       As more and more people across the world continue to stay locked down indoors,we are seeing experimentation in how we communicate and stay social with friends, family and colleagues. From a work perspective, we are seeing what the NYT defined as the “World's Largest Work-From-Home Experiment”. While from a recreational perspective we are seeing more and more apps rise to the occasion and develop creative solutions to keep us connected (and quite frankly, sane). Here at Key Lime Interactive, we’ve decided to be proactive about the emerging trends in XR that we were seeing in the marketspace and optimize our XR strategy. That’s why we’d like to explore the ways in which XR can be used as a communication tool in both our work and recreational lives.

    Since the inception of Key Lime Interactive as a user experience research and design agency, the company has come a long way to be a leader in the market. We are trusted by 100+ of the world’s most admired companies to help them improve the user experience for their products and services. An important pillar of the company’s core values is discerning the bigger picture and deciphering the puzzle. Abiding by this core value, the company’s thought leaders and strategists took a deep dive into understanding what elements of emerging technology will play a pivotal role in shaping 2020 and the new decade that lies ahead of us.

    During this time when technology is shifting at a fast pace, with all the automation and remote work, the reports are indicating that the XR market size will reach USD 571.42 Billion by 2025. Today, thinking of incorporating eXtended Reality (XR) into your businesses seems to be a practical and effective approach. However, a few questions remain unanswered, such as: when is the best time to adopt, what type of XR tech fits my needs, how to streamline all parts of my business to prepare.

Many digital products use psychology to influence behavior. Behavioral design is a field that’s concerned with researching and designing products that influence human behavior and it provides a set of tools for persuasion. It sometimes tends to be met with some level of skepticism because to some it implies that users are being forced or persuaded into doing things they typically wouldn't do. Like many tools, this tool can also be used for evil and for good.

      In this article, I will try to explain the main principles of Object-Oriented-Programming. Object-Oriented-Programing allows programmers to think of software development as if they’re working with real-life entities. In your everyday life, people have the knowledge and can-do various works/tasks. In OOP, objects have fields to store knowledge/state/data and can-do various methods.

  At Key Lime Interactive, our user researchers have the opportunity to encounter a variety of studies, subject matter, and clients. However, Key Lime also provides researchers the opportunity to grow their research skill set as they see fit. One such opportunity is for KLI researchers to develop and conduct an internal study for conference or journal submissions.

      In the face of a remote working world, how can we decide which tool in our belt best fits the needs of our clients and the restrictions of our users? There are many third-party remote usability testing suites that specialize in moderated and unmoderated online studies with all promising the ability to deliver quick insights at a lower cost than using traditional methods. Many promise to quickly recruit users, run them through a variety of usability scenarios, establish benchmarks, conduct large-scale user research and many more options. While many of these tools seem to reach a high level of convenience, how do you know which one is the correct one for your project? When would you be interested in an unmoderated online tool instead of moderated online sessions? 

     So you have been thinking about diving into XR (eXtended Reality) but you are unsure where to even start or what all these terms and acronyms mean? To help you get your heads around the various concepts and to explore what type of application would best fit your project’s needs, we created a handy guide.

       Recruiting the right participants for your study is just as important as the questions you ask. Determining your target user base, sending out study invitations, scheduling participants, and choosing the right incentives are just a few of the steps you need to take to make sure your study stays on track. I am a former UX research participant recruiter at Google and currently recruit participants here at Key Lime. Here are some tips I’ve gathered to get you started on recruiting the right participants for your studies.

      Last year during the EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference) 2019 keynote speech by Sareeta Amrute, various researchers grappled with the idea of tech colonialism and the need for decolonizing research. Comparing the tech industry to the colonialism of the latter half of the past millennium, Amrute and others explored a number of concerns and issues present with current technological expansion, specifically calling attention to how big data is extracted, curated, transacted, and utilized for varying ends, and the potential consequences they bring. As companies strive to be more socially responsible and make a difference in the world, they will need to adopt new methods and approaches that curtail the challenges outlined above. Building off this insight, this post explores how UX research can tackle the challenges of tech colonialism by adopting Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods in their project design. As such, it is not meant to be an exhaustive overview but rather the beginning of a conversation concerning how we can shift the ways we conduct research and the broader impacts it can have on users.

Part 3 of 3: Creating a Mixed Reality (MR) Experience 

In the first part of this series we covered what XR is and what types of technologies fall along it's spectrum. We then talked in depth about what it would take to create a simple MR experience including the need to take into account the prior experiences of the user and their interaction with the virtual and physical space. Things can get complicated very quickly so it's important to really think about the type of experiences you are trying to provide the user.  Once you have a good handle on that it's time to break that down step by step and then take those steps and dissect it even further until you have a very detailed outline of the all of the possible ways that a user will perceive and interact with the digital world that you've created.  

Part 2 of 3:   The Cube Example

In part one of this series we touched briefly on what the XR landscape is and who the major players are in this space. Once you have an understanding of the general space, it is then important to grasp just how fast this space is changing with new innovations emerging all of the time.  In this quickly evolving technological landscape we have a situation where the technology and applications are advancing to a degree where usability guidelines no longer apply. If you do not understand the factors of usability and user centered design in spatial computing applications then you are not going to be able to create intuitive interfaces with natural affordances allowing the user to easily navigate virtual information living in the physical world.