There Are More Virtual Reality Headsets Than You Realize!

Virtual reality (VR) is a bit of a hot topic at the moment! I spend a lot of time putting together a weekly newsletter all about emerging tech news like virtual reality, talking about VR at events, showing people the possibilities of VR, teaching people to build VR experiences and more. There are a lot of VR thoughts flooding this brain of mine! Throughout all that, I've come across plenty of virtual reality headsets and thought I'd share something that not a lot of people out there realize — there are many more VR headsets out there than you think... and even more on the way! Here's a look at my favorites, starting with the more commonly known ones!

Oculus Rift

[caption id="attachment_142263" align="aligncenter" width="800"] The Oculus Rift Consumer Edition headset[/caption]

The Oculus Rift is the VR headset that started the whole VR trend once again! Even this headset has been around for longer than a lot of people realize. It has had several developer iterations, including the Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 (DK1) released in 2013 for their Kickstarter backers and the higher resolution Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 (DK2) released in 2014, before finally releasing the Oculus Rift Consumer Edition in 2016 to many eager VR adopters around the world. There were other unreleased prototypes of the Rift in between as well, but to keep things simple, we'll stick with the ones released to developers!

The Rift itself works by being connected to a PC. It currently no longer supports Mac OS. To be honest, I don't think any of the VR headsets that will be mentioned in this article work with Mac OS. VR apps can be installed via the Oculus Store.

What's the Rift capable of in comparison to other headsets? Here's a simplified list of features which I'll use across all currently available headsets I mention in this piece:

Resolution: 1080×1200 for each eye.
Field of view: 110°
Display tech: One OLED screen for each eye.
Refresh rate: 90 Hz
Headphones: Integrated into the headset.
Seated/standing or room-scale: Most experiences are seated or standing. Extra sensors can be purchased soon (announced in October 2016) that will allow for the ability to walk around a space, however I'm not sure how many Rift games have been built for that. Largely, Oculus have been focused on VR experiences you can have standing/sitting in one place.
Controllers: Oculus Touch handheld controllers available to order since October 2016.

HTC Vive

[caption id="attachment_142265" align="aligncenter" width="800"] The HTC Vive headset with its Lighthouse sensors and controllers[/caption]

The HTC Vive isn't quite as well known outside of the tech and gaming community but it's growing in momentum that is well deserved! The Vive is a partnership between HTC and Valve, which was officially revealed in March 2015. My favorite thing about the Vive is that it comes with "Lighthouse sensors" to allow you to walk around an area of a maximum of 15x15 feet. This ability to walk around is known as "room-scale". It also comes with two handheld controllers. Because of this, a large amount of the Vive VR apps and games out there work wonderfully with full immersion — you can walk around an experience, look at it from different angles and interact with it using both hand controllers. One of my favorite VR applications, Tilt Brush, lets you draw in 3D space. You can literally draw an environment around you, look at it from all angles and (with one of the latest updates) have it react to music! It is fantastic.

Just like the Rift, the Vive works by being connected to a PC. HTC Vive games and VR experiences can be purchased from Steam or the Vive's own store called Viveport. Steam's VR experiences can also be played on other VR headsets, depending on the app's requirements (if it requires Vive controllers, for example, then the app won't likely be compatible).

Resolution: 1080×1200 for each eye.
Field of view: 110°
Display tech: One OLED screen for each eye.
Refresh rate: 90 Hz
Headphones: Requires external headphones to be plugged in.
Seated/standing or room-scale: The Vive is known especially for its room-scale capabilities!
Controllers: The Vive comes with two handheld controllers.

Sony PlayStation VR

[caption id="attachment_142268" align="aligncenter" width="800"] The PlayStation VR headset with Move Controllers and the PlayStation Camera[/caption]

Many people out there don't know this is coming, but by Christmas, virtual reality is going to be in a lot of homes around the world. It works by connecting up to the PlayStation 4 and has its own slightly less advanced controllers. It is priced cheaper than the above two headsets but isn't quite as fully featured. From the sounds of it though, the games on their way for this platform just might make up for its slightly less impressive specs. Sony has a lot of partners in the game development industry. Upcoming titles like Batman: Arkham VR and Resident Evil 7 in VR sound like they'll be a lot of fun! Each game will have a different level of VR compatibility, different controller requirements... etc, which will be listed on each game box.

Resolution: 960x1080 for each eye.
Field of view: 100°
Display tech: One OLED screen split in two for each eye.
Refresh rate: Can switch between 120Hz and 90 Hz.
Headphones: Requires external headphones to be plugged in.
Seated/standing or room-scale: Sony recommends people sit for the majority of their VR experience. There is no capability for walking around like the room-scale of the Vive.
Controllers: Games may use the typical PlayStation controllers, or you can purchase one or two PlayStation Move controllers separately. They also come in a bundle with the headset. A "PS Aim Controller" is also on the way for first-person shooting games.

Google Cardboard

[caption id="attachment_142264" align="aligncenter" width="800"] The latest Google Cardboard headset[/caption]

The Google Cardboard headset is a portable headset that originally was indeed made of cardboard! Of all the VR headsets, this is the one most people who I've come across have tried. Rather than the headset itself doing very much, it is a container for a smartphone that runs the applications. Each VR application displays two images, one for each eye, in a splitscreen view. Those views are looked at through lenses in the Cardboard headset. These are the cheapest and easiest way to try out VR as they originally cost around $20 and can now be even cheaper! There are plenty of stores out there who have been selling relatively inexpensive Google Cardboard-compatible headsets including Aldi, Lincraft, Tesco, Walmart and Costco. This list alone could have been three times as long if I included every Google Cardboard-style headset out there today! Google Cardboard apps can be found in the Google Play store, and WebVR experiences (VR running in the smartphone browser) also are quite easy to try out on the Google Cardboard.

Continue reading %There Are More Virtual Reality Headsets Than You Realize!%

by Patrick Catanzariti via SitePoint

A Crash Course of Changes to Exception Handling in PHP 7

Exception handling saves your code in the most unusual circumstances. PHP 7 has introduced two new classes that assist a developer in handling errors with ease, and that's what we'll look at in this post. Before the introduction of these classes in PHP 7, exception error classes were written to handle the different types of errors.

Throwable Class

Throwable is the interface from which, Exception and Error classes branch out. This particular class helps you catch any throwable errors, irrespective of whether they are an exception or an error. For example:

<?php
try {
    throw new Exception("This is an exception");
}
catch (Throwable $e) {
    echo $e->getMessage();
}

Or the newly defined ParseError:

<?php
try {
    $result = eval("2*'7'");
}
catch (Throwable $e) {
    echo $e->getMessage();
}

After executing this code, you will get a ParseError because ";" is missing inside eval().

User defined classes cannot implement Throwable directly, and must instead extend Exception which implements Throwable.

Error Class

The Error class in PHP 7 is a new type of class that handles the different errors - they are either fatal errors or type errors, and this class is only for internal PHP errors. Error is divided into four subclasses:

Continue reading %A Crash Course of Changes to Exception Handling in PHP 7%

by Ahmed Khan via SitePoint

Why people participate in UX research (and why the reasons matter)

Finding and scheduling suitable research participants is one of the biggest logistical challenges of UX research. Not to mention then getting those participants to fully engage in research activities. 

There have been many articles written about finding UX participants and ensuring they are at least representative of your users. But I’m yet to find much good discussion about the motivations for participants to take part in our research, and how that affects their participation and the research results. 

Understanding the underlying contexts, motivations, and biases when people enter a study helps plan and interpret results in the most neutral way possible.

There are many exceptions, but the most common ways to find UX research participants are to reach out to existing customers or leads, or use panels of UX tools like usertesting.com or recruiting companies. Even if you write a screener and recruit for a well-defined persona, each source results in different motivations, and can lead to varied responses to research activities.

Let’s look at each main recruiting source and some of the pros, cons, and things to be aware of while crafting your research plans.

Existing Users

People who already have a relationship with your brand can’t help but bring their preexisting impression of the company – whether positive or negative – to research sessions. Their overarching perception of your brand will sway their impressions of the product you’re investigating.

This is called the halo effect. If you generally like a brand, you’ll be primed to like everything about it. If you dislike the brand, you’ll be primed to think more negatively about every aspect you see.

Let’s say, for example, that you’ve always wanted a BMW, and hold the company in high regard. You get brought in to test a new navigation system and have trouble entering your address.

If you’ve always wanted to drive one of these, you might have trouble giving unbiased feedback. Image source

Your first thought may not be that the system has a usability problem. Without even realising it, you might blame yourself, thinking you made a mistake, or write it off as part of being just a prototype.

The information in front of you doesn’t match your previous expectations (a phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance). So you assign the trouble elsewhere, downplay the importance of the issue, or focus your attention on the aspects of the experience that you like (what’s called confirmation bias). That means as a UX research participant, you’ve failed to give a lot of really important information without even knowing it.

A user’s experience with an overall brand also plays into their motivation to participate in a test. If a person frequently uses a product, they may have a vested interest in seeing the service improve and/or vouching for specific changes or improvements. If they like the product or have a good relationship with someone who works there, they may participate because they want to help out. On the other hand, if they’ve had negative experiences, they may look at a research session as a chance to vent or find an inside connection to get things changed.

Special note: If you work on enterprise tools and/or your users are internal, you’re likely to experience exaggerated effects of both the halo effect and confirmation bias, as well as battling politics and ulterior motives. You can’t avoid this, but it’s good to have a heads up.

Panel members

Participants who actively sign up for a research panel know they’ll be compensated for their time when they participate, and are more likely to view responding as a job.

The downside of panels is you don’t know as much about them – including if they’re just in it for the money. Image source

Many panels allow researchers to “rate” participants, so respondents know that if they give poor quality feedback, they could lose opportunities. The upside of this is that they are the most likely group to show up to sessions as scheduled and respond appropriately and consistently in longitudinal studies. Several studies have shown that monetary incentives increase participation rates.

The downside is that they may view their participation as only a job. They may not be invested in your product or may want to fudge their way into being seen as a representative user.

We’ve all heard of the professional user research participant, who will “ frequently supplement their income by participating in user research… and say and do whatever it takes to get into a study.” Writing effective screeners can help prevent some of those participants from partaking, but even the most qualified panel respondent is more likely to be motivated by money over altruism or intrinsic interest in the product.

So how can you make the most of your user research?

Now that we’ve looked at some of the issues, let’s take a look at the steps you can take to get the best possible engagement and data from research sessions. We have tools at our disposal, regardless of the source of our users.

Offer compensation (in a way that participants want to receive it)

Remember that participating in a study is essentially a social exchange. People need to feel they at least come out even. Money, of course, is one of the easiest benefits to provide. 

Studies show that monetary incentives, including receiving a fixed amount of cash, being entered into a lottery for a prize, and charitable donations on a participant’s behalf, can make respondents more likely to participate in research. Besides the obvious benefit of getting paid, compensating participants shows you value their time and input.

Furthermore, giving participants an incentive of any kind can help spark the social construct around the reciprocity principle. Essentially, if you give something (anything) to someone, they will feel compelled to do something in return. This can be especially powerful, especially for longitudinal studies. Anecdotally, I’ve found I get the best response rates when I give about a third of an incentive after successful setup of a longitudinal study and the rest of the incentive upon completion.

Get creative with cash incentives – try a lottery or donation to a charity.

When choosing compensation, be aware that different types of monetary incentives will be most effective for different types of studies and different types of people. People who have strong inclinations toward self-direction, learning new things, or risk-taking respond better to lottery-type incentives than fixed amounts. People who value close social relations and betterment of the group over oneself prefer money given to a charity in their honour.

So think about the type of characteristics your target persona has and consider whether you can shift (or at least experiment with shifting!) the type of incentive you offer. Think carefully about offering a discount to your service as motivation. This can sway people too far and they might feel uncomfortable saying anything negative.

Also be mindful of the amount of incentive you provide. You want to provide an amount that demonstrates you appropriately value their time without breaking the budget. For instance, I’ve paid doctors much more to participate in a study than general e-commerce shoppers and typically pay participants of in-person or ethnographic studies much more than respondents to remote sessions.

Help participants see the importance of their feedback

To tip the social exchange cost/benefit ratio even more, give people context about why their help is useful and what you’ll do with the information. People like to know the feedback they give isn’t just going into a corporate vacuum, never to be seen again.

You can do this simply by introducing the topic at the beginning of a session – something as simple as, “we’re talking about x today because we’ve noticed some issues and would like to make improvements.” Though be careful, because there are times that it makes sense not to give too much away at the beginning of a session.

I’ve also found that people love hearing about changes we’ve made based on their feedback, especially with long term customers or internal users. It’s not always possible to share, but if you can, highlight specific study periods and lessons learned in release notes or even press releases. Participants appreciate it, and are more likely to take part again, or encourage others to do the same.

Create expectations through group labels

This last one is a bit tricky, but several studies show that people are more likely to adopt behaviours based on external labels if they are relatively positive. One study showed that when researchers labelled a random group of people as politically active, they were 15% more likely to vote, and several studies have shown that people tend to like to belong to groups or follow social norms.

My educated guess is that labelling people sets an expectation they’ll behave a certain way. If they don’t follow through, they start to experience the same kind of cognitive dissonance as when you find an issue with a product you love. You can subtly shift language to let people know you expect them to follow through – for example, tell them they’re in the group most likely to respond.

Switch it up when you can

When you know how people can be swayed based on the way you recruit, you can take steps to minimise bias in your results. As you can see, different sources of users and incentives vary the amount and quality of participation. When possible, try to use different types of recruiting methods and experiment with compensation to maximise your results.

What are some of the ways you reduce bias from people taking part in UX research? Let us know in the comments!

The post Why people participate in UX research (and why the reasons matter) appeared first on UX Mastery.

by Amanda Stockwell via UX Mastery

Build a Messaging System with Rails and ActionCable

In the past few months, I've received many questions about Mailboxer and therefore decided to explain how to create a custom messaging system for Rails. Of course, this system will not provide all of the features Mailboxer has, but it will be more than enough for many application. When you fully understanding how this system works, it'll be much easier to further enhance it.

This article is going to be divided into two parts:

• The first part will cover preparations, associations setup, and the creation of controllers and views. We will also add support for Emoji. By the end of this part, you will have a working messaging system.
• The second part will explain how to utilize ActionCable to implement a real-time messaging and notification system. ActionCable is probably the most anticipated feature of Rails 5 and I already covered it some time ago. On top of that, we will also implement "user is online" functionality.

Continue reading %Build a Messaging System with Rails and ActionCable%

by Ilya Bodrov-Krukowski via SitePoint

AtoZ CSS Screencast: Vertical-Alignment in CSS

Vertical centering is a firm favorite of designers - for both print and digital media.

But aligning things vertically with CSS is not the easiest thing to do.

This issue is made worse in a world of multiple devices and responsive design as we need our elements to be flexible in height - which can make calculating their vertical center quick tricky.

In this episode we’ll learn all about:

• The vertical-align property and how and when it works
• A method for vertical aligning an element with a known height
• And finally one approach for vertically centering elements with variable height.

vertical-align

The vertical-align property only affects elements with their display set to inline, inline-block or table-cell.

It takes a length, percentage or keyword value.

Lengths and percentages align the baseline of the element at that given distance above the baseline of its parent.

Continue reading %AtoZ CSS Screencast: Vertical-Alignment in CSS%

by Guy Routledge via SitePoint

CAMPER FW16

For FW16's gender-morphing campaign, Convoy built an interactive website that immerse the users through the campaign's universe!
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day

How to Reach More Local Customers With Facebook

Wondering how to grow local connections on Facebook? Looking for ways to boost the visibility of your local business? With a few organic tactics, you can reach more local customers on Facebook without spending money on ads. In this article, you’ll discover four ways to reach a local audience on Facebook. #1: Deliver Targeted Messaging [...]

This post How to Reach More Local Customers With Facebook first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

by Ana Gotter via