Give your user superpowers!

One of the fun things in virtual worlds is that the laws of nature do not need to apply. Sure, the user has certain expectations about the behavior of things in your world, and you should honor these as much as possible, but you can do things that give your users the feeling that they have superpowers.

Some things are so common that, these days, we pay no attention to them anymore. Take for instance, a smartphone with a built-in camera. In the old days, when you wanted to take a picture, you had to take a camera, take the picture, drop off the film at the local developer, have it developed, go back to the developer, and see the picture. Then, you find one picture where something interesting is happening in the background. You want to focus on that tiny part, so you have it enlarged. This takes another couple of days and is usually quite expensive, so you don't do this that much.

Now, however, things are different. You take a picture, and you see the results instantaneously. When you look at that picture, you see something interesting, and you use two fingers to enlarge the photo. This is something so common that we do not think about it anymore. However, in the preceding example, you could not do this. If you tried it, you would end up with two pieces of paper, each with half the picture. You still could not see what happened in the background.

We now take this enlarging of pictures for granted. With HoloLens, we can do even more. We can give the user the ability to move objects by just looking at them. We can let the user move items with one move of a single finger. We can give the user the power to lift an elephant with one spoken word. We can transport the user from his own home to a magical kingdom no one has ever seen before.

In other words, we can give the user the feeling that he is omnipotent. Of course, with great power comes great responsibility, so use this with moderation. If we do this too much in our apps, the user will feel discomfort. It will be too far removed from his normal frame of reference, and the user will stop using the app, but with just a bit of superpowers, the user will feel invited to explore your world more and more deeply.

Why should we care about this? The answer is simple, but let me ask you a question first. I assume that you have a smartphone, a tablet, or have used Windows 10 in tablet mode. If so, I am sure that you have also installed apps there. Now answer this--How often have you read the manual for these apps? I can guess the answer--never. Apps come with no manuals, or with very little guidance at most.

HoloLens apps should be like this as well. The user should feel at home in the app. The basic gestures, such as air-tap and air-drag-and-drop, should be enough to start using the app. Using these gestures, the user will learn a bit more about the app. He will see which voice commands he can use. If you give him superpowers, the user will feel more confident to explore the app. After all, there is this sense of invincibility you get when you are given special powers.

All jokes aside, this really helps to make the user want to explore and not be afraid to try out new things.