Saved

Writing SwiftUI is like riding a bicycle downhill on a beautiful sunny day. Until the bike suddenly explodes, killing you.

Poor design meets one need while creating a dozen others. Good design resolves problems without negatively affecting anything else in its ecosystem. We call this lens of thinking "systems thinking." It tends to separate the genuinely great designers from the pretty-great ones. The designers who do tremendous work know that what they're creating does not exist within a bubble. They understand that the context of what they're making plays a vital role in how the team should build it. They know how what they create affects everything it touches, particularly the people. The design is intentional. Trade-offs are known, weighted, and decided on. Not only in the immediate problem space but in the surrounding spaces too.

Given all that, here’s what made me gasp on day 1 and what I’m still thinking about. Peeping through passthrough. The way it works is that you “draw” (in VR) a box on the floor. Within that box, you are immersed in 3D virtual reality. Near the edge, you see the box around you outlined as a grid. As you touch the edge, a hole appears… you can poke your head through, and you see the real world beyond, in black and white fuzzy passthrough. I found myself leaning out to have a chat or to grab a drink. Delightful. A Godzilla’s eye’s view. Playing mini golf, I found a button that let me zoom out. Suddenly I was standing in the middle of this golf course arranged on a mountain, the mountain halfway up my chest. Walking just a foot or two, and bending down, and leaning close, I could examine bridges and trees and caves and courses. An incredible, examinable overview, in a way that would take multiple steps on any other device. Height, space, and scale. In the first room of Anne Frank’s house, there’s a steep staircase leading down, but it’s inaccessible from the tour. However I was able to kneel down, put my head through the bannisters, and peer over the edge, down the stairwell, and into the next room. I know this is what VR is all about, but the sense of being located continues to astound. What do we do now the gamut of interaction can include vertigo and awe? It’s like suddenly being given an extra colour. Objects that cross the threshold. When I pick up the real-life controls, they appear in VR space. Headset on, everything black and gone – except the controls in my hands are still there. And now they have extra green lights and details on them! Janus objects that face both ways into physical and fictive reality. The controls are real… but realer in VR. So many opportunities for play.