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Hi, I'm really glad to see the creation of the Guides app. I think this has the potential to vastly reduce the time it takes for content creators to author educational experiences and I hope that in the very near future we won't have as great a dependence on Unity than we did in 2016. With that said, I humbly suggest a number of improvements so that Guides can become a successful WYSIWYG authoring tool. • Please enable multiple layers on the Guides window so that we can use different offset angles between the background canvas and text fields with a vertical separation between the two. The current approach forces an unnatural 90 degree placement of the flat Guides placards and doesn't permit a more natural ergonomic reading pattern, such as how one reads a book. Additionally, the multi-layer offset would enable an intentionally artificial separation between informative text fields and the holographic representations of real-world objects; and it would likely add to the legibility of those fields. • Font libraries and modifiers with some html-like class tags. It's kind of absurd that we cannot even bold or italicize any of the text. Hyper-thin type faces might look good in marketing materials but they are problematic for educational MR experiences. • Please enable re-flowable themes within the MR experience, ideally that can also auto-adjust to different light conditions or dynamic user preferences so that it can flip between high-contrast dark mode and something more stylistically ambient. Just as the skin of a 3D object can be modified within the Author side of the app, so too should the placards be modifiable. • Please enable collapsible placard states so that we don’t have to choose between a persistently anchored object or the creepy weird tag-along stalker billboards. This would be like something similar to how the new in-app Bloom gesture has a compressed toolbar that precedes the Holo Start Menu. • Please implement counter-rotational gimbals so that subtle, shaky head movements are always softened via the virtual equivalent of a shock-absorber. Non-volitional inputs are extremely common for new MR users, and that's a much larger population than anyone else. • Please make cursor gravity wells the default pattern. Fitts' Law is painfully more applicable in MR experiences than for traditional 2D platforms. Tiny buttons with unforgiving hit-boxes make an unpleasant and distracting feature. • Please enable a gaze-activated zoom magnification for small (or distant) UI elements, like an implicit universal accessibility agent. People can walk but sometimes their mobility is limited due to interactions within the experience. • Please implement a native frosted glass blur renderer that activates when a UI or informational popup is placed in the foreground of a larger 3D object. Also, a Guides placard should never ever occlude the main 3D object. • Please enable multi-user shared experiences, or at the very least a way for one instructor to seamlessly observe multiple Guides session within a classroom. It would also be beneficial to include a "request help" button to discretely communicate with a local expert. • Please include a progress & step-remaining visualization layer so that a user knows approximately where they are at in a given activity with a quick glance. Time management indicators are priceless, if not often overlooked, experiential features.

Category: General
STATUS DETAILS
Under Review