Background
Reality Check Systems have developed a platform that provides Immersive Tours of remote mining sites and related infrastructure projects to interested investors. These tours include 360 video content that is navigable via a web browser or Virtual Reality (VR) headset.

The Reality Check Systems immersive mining tour platform is unique within the United Kingdom and was borne out of a vision by their founder. The platform was developed by a small team who focused heavily on its technical requirements with user experience (UX) not being formerly considered instead being designed ad hoc by leadership. The resulting UX was unintuitive with only the Reality Check Systems team able to use it. As this reduced scalability the team decided they needed expert help to improve the platforms user experience to make it intuitive enough for clients to use independently thus increasing adoption.

What we did
Reality Check Systems approached City Interaction Lab to help them identify user experience issues with their platform and recommend ways to make it more intuitive. The City Interaction Lab team conducted moderated user testing sessions with 8 participants sourced by the Reality Check Systems team. Sessions were conducted on both the desktop and VR platforms. Participants were asked to complete relevant tasks within the platform and provide feedback on the experience. The Reality Check Systems team watched the sessions in real time from an adjoining observation area with the opportunity for questions. For VR sessions participants interactions within the VR environment and their real world motions were both visible to observers and recorded for later review. Following the sessions, a report was provided highlighting key issues and actionable recommendations.

Outcomes
Reality Check realised the importance of user feedback in making design decisions and the value of user testing to obtain these. Sessions demonstrated that their current VR implementation was unintuitive due to inconsistent interaction styles within the platform and reliance on gestural interaction for content which did not require it. Following the sessions Reality Check Systems decided to focus on their desktop client for providing mine tours.

What the clients said

‘Reality Check chose the City Interaction Lab to test our new Virtual Reality User Interface and research different options we had for our development roadmap. The facilities are excellent and allowed us to test multiple device platforms including mobile devices, desktop and tethered VR rig. The experience of the lab staff of building a positive rapport with participants was especially valuable as it increased the quality and quantity of insights disclosed by each participant while maintaining a friendly and safe atmosphere. We will certainly return to test our next major update to the user interface prior to release.’

– David van Eeghen – VP Planning + Communications