Design Great visionOS Apps: Our Takeaways
We always learn something new every time we get to hear from Apple’s design evangelists and engineers for visionOS. On Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024, Apple hosted a day-long in-person and virtual event called “Envision the Future: Build great apps for visionOS” in Cupertino, Calif.
Apple held a similar event earlier this year, but unfortunately, our teams were knee-deep in other visionOS projects to attend in person. Thankfully, this time they opened the event up to virtual attendees, so we were able to participate and listen in.
While a lot of their content is well documented in videos from WWDC and their web site, we also heard a few insights that we’ve never heard before, at this level of detail.In no particular order, here are our top takeaways and juicy tidbits that we captured from the event:
Landscape vs. portrait windows: Apple generally recommends horizontal layouts to vertical ones to reduce “neck strain, as rotating your head horizontally is easier than tilting."
Safe areas: When designing custom windows, don’t cover up the system UI, e.g. the bottom window grab and lower corners for resizing.
Avoid ground movement in life-size 3D space: Prefer teleporting movements in a 3D space instead of directional controls. Apple’s evangelists recommended against experiences “where the user is moving the ground below and around them” as it could cause immediate comfort issues. (This information aligns with a Nov. 19 update in the Human Interface Guidelines on designing immersive experiences.)
Catch window closures: One great tip from the Q&A was to use scenePhase from within a View (not at the App level) to be able to detect when a window has closed. This is particularly useful if you have a main window and want to be able to reopen it when your user is in an Immersive Space.
Ways to get 3D content: 3D Libraries, Object Capture, or Digital Content Creation tools are the sources suggested for getting photorealistic 3D objects into your apps.
File feedback: The biggest takeaway? To influence the future of Apple Vision Pro and this new visionOS platform, file feedback through the app! In the final Q&A session, the folks on stage said they read all feedback and it really helps them make decisions for their future roadmap. So definitely share use cases and reasons for future features you’d like to see in visionOS!
