I'm a researcher in the field of marketing, and I'm interested in future technology marketing. We have the Hololens in our lab, and we wanted to see how people perceive and experience Augmented Reality, and what it takes for them to adopt this new technology. So, we started a research with more than 150 people who each tried Hololens for the first time for about 10 minutes. We had them use different apps like Holograms, ARails (a simple designing app that lets you create a road, choose different builds for the road, and put different objects on it), Actiongram, Galaxy Explorer, RoboRaid, Fragments, and Young Conker. In the process, I had the chance to work with more than 160 users when they tried Hololens, taught them how to work with it, and heard their feedback afterwards. Now, I'm not a tech-savvy person, so these comments are not very technical, but I thought it would be cool to share what I learned with you guys:
1) Adjustment and fit on the head: To my surprise, we had some people coming in (this happened with ladies mostly) to try it, and no matter how many different adjustments we tried, the Hololens did not fit quite well on their head. There is a certain limit to how much you can make it small, so some people had to hold it with their hands to keep it from falling off.
2) Weight and pressure on the nose: Almost nobody felt 100% comfortable with Hololens. We actually had quite a lot of people describing it as "very uncomfortable". Although everybody enjoyed the experience of using it, most people were kinda relieved when they took it off, and I could see their noses turned red. I think the nose piece can definitely use a more comfortable cushiony thing on it. I myself hold Hololens with one hand to take the pressure off my nose.
3) People with glasses: Most of the participants who had glasses did not have a problem leaving their glasses on. It really didn't make much difference in terms of the experience.
4) FOV: This is what we heard from almost half the participants: "I wish I could have a broader view". I was reading the posts in the forum and someone said that because of the FOV, the videos that you make with Hololens cannot quite capture what you're really experiencing, so here's what you can do: There is an accompanying app for Hololens (Microsoft Hololens) that we used on our computer to livestream what our participants were seeing. The interesting thing was that we had a much better FOV on this app. So, if you want to make a video when you are playing a game or have a Hologram in the room with you, pair the Hololens with this app and record it on the app instead of Hololens. It will definitely capture the experience much better.
5) Scanning of the room: sometimes weird stuff happened with some apps, and I'm not sure whether it was because of the inaccuracy in scanning the room or not. Sometimes we opened an app, and suddenly half of it would fall behind the wall in the middle of using it. No matter how much we changed our position, we couldn't see the remove button. We had to use the voice command to remove these apps. It didn't happen that often, but still I'm not sure what caused it.
6) Motion sickness: I'm one of those people who get motion sickness quite easily, and whenever we watch a 3D movie at the cinema, I get a headache. Hololens gives me the same feeling. When I have it on for like 10 minutes, I have to take it off and rest my eyes to avoid the headache. It's definitely not something I can use to watch a movie or play games with. We had a few participants with motion sickness that also felt the same way.
All that being said, the experience of using Hololens and mixed reality is super cool, and from what I saw, it blows people's minds when they try it the first time; however, I believe you should give it a test run for at least 20-25 minutes before you make a decision to buy it because as cool as it really is, it's not for everybody.
1) Adjustment and fit on the head: To my surprise, we had some people coming in (this happened with ladies mostly) to try it, and no matter how many different adjustments we tried, the Hololens did not fit quite well on their head. There is a certain limit to how much you can make it small, so some people had to hold it with their hands to keep it from falling off.
2) Weight and pressure on the nose: Almost nobody felt 100% comfortable with Hololens. We actually had quite a lot of people describing it as "very uncomfortable". Although everybody enjoyed the experience of using it, most people were kinda relieved when they took it off, and I could see their noses turned red. I think the nose piece can definitely use a more comfortable cushiony thing on it. I myself hold Hololens with one hand to take the pressure off my nose.
3) People with glasses: Most of the participants who had glasses did not have a problem leaving their glasses on. It really didn't make much difference in terms of the experience.
4) FOV: This is what we heard from almost half the participants: "I wish I could have a broader view". I was reading the posts in the forum and someone said that because of the FOV, the videos that you make with Hololens cannot quite capture what you're really experiencing, so here's what you can do: There is an accompanying app for Hololens (Microsoft Hololens) that we used on our computer to livestream what our participants were seeing. The interesting thing was that we had a much better FOV on this app. So, if you want to make a video when you are playing a game or have a Hologram in the room with you, pair the Hololens with this app and record it on the app instead of Hololens. It will definitely capture the experience much better.
5) Scanning of the room: sometimes weird stuff happened with some apps, and I'm not sure whether it was because of the inaccuracy in scanning the room or not. Sometimes we opened an app, and suddenly half of it would fall behind the wall in the middle of using it. No matter how much we changed our position, we couldn't see the remove button. We had to use the voice command to remove these apps. It didn't happen that often, but still I'm not sure what caused it.
6) Motion sickness: I'm one of those people who get motion sickness quite easily, and whenever we watch a 3D movie at the cinema, I get a headache. Hololens gives me the same feeling. When I have it on for like 10 minutes, I have to take it off and rest my eyes to avoid the headache. It's definitely not something I can use to watch a movie or play games with. We had a few participants with motion sickness that also felt the same way.
All that being said, the experience of using Hololens and mixed reality is super cool, and from what I saw, it blows people's minds when they try it the first time; however, I believe you should give it a test run for at least 20-25 minutes before you make a decision to buy it because as cool as it really is, it's not for everybody.
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