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Specialty

XR design (extended reality)

Designs virtual, augmented and mixed reality experiences, in which digital content surrounds the person or blends with the real place. It is not the spatial design of buildings.

In Spanish
Diseño XR (realidad extendida)
Origin
Milgram and Kishino (1994); Slater and Wilbur (1997)

What problem it addresses

Without the frame of a screen, everything around the person can be interface, and poor design is tiring or causes motion sickness.

Principles

  • Comfort first

    What matters stays within the field of view, and motion is smooth and predictable.

  • Near and far

    You can touch within arm’s reach or point from a distance, with targets larger than on a screen.

  • Something that stays still

    A fixed element in the scene, or being able to see the real place, helps people stay oriented.

  • Several ways to use it

    Hands, gaze, voice, controller or keyboard, depending on the person and the device.

Applications in design

  • Use it like this

    Save XR for what is costly or risky to rehearse in reality, or for seeing something at full scale before building it.

  • Avoid

    Accelerations, sudden stops or turns the person didn’t cause: they make people sick.

  • Don’t fall for it

    Test seated and standing, with people of different heights, and always offer a way to see the real place.

Connections

Builds on

Related to

Authors and works

  1. 1994

    Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino

    Arranged displays that mix the real and the virtual along a continuum running from a fully real environment to a fully virtual one, with mixed reality in between (augmented reality and augmented virtuality).

  2. 1997

    Mel Slater and Sylvia Wilbur

    Separated immersion, what the technology offers, from presence: the feeling of being in that place.

  3. 2020

    ISO

    The ISO 9241-394 standard sets requirements to reduce visually induced motion sickness in content and displays, including virtual reality headsets.

Sources

Original sources

  • Milgram, P., & Kishino, F. (1994). A taxonomy of mixed reality visual displays. IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, E77-D(12), 1321–1329. View source: Milgram, P., & Kishino, F. (1994)
  • Slater, M., & Wilbur, S. (1997). A framework for immersive virtual environments (FIVE): Speculations on the role of presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 6(6), 603–616. View source: Slater, M., & Wilbur, S. (1997)
  • International Organization for Standardization (2020). ISO 9241-394:2020. Ergonomics of human-system interaction, Part 394: Ergonomic requirements for reducing undesirable biomedical effects of visually induced motion sickness during watching electronic images. ISO. View source: International Organization for Standardization (2020)
  • Google (2025). Design for XR immersive. In Android XR design guidelines. Android Developers. View source: Google (2025)

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