Microsoft Guides' Dotted Lines in WorkLink

Andrew Hale

• October 25, 2022 22:45

Hello ScopeAR Team-

 

I’m a big fan of a feature used in one of your competitor’s AR software.  For those who haven't seen it, I'll explain that Microsoft Guides has a nearly elegant way to lead users to a new location within an experience.  When authoring the Guide, you simply place a target gem on the place you need the user to move to.  Then, when operating the Guide, a dotted line is always pulsing from the UI to the gem location.  It’s really obvious to the operator where they need to focus next, and super easy for the author to author.

 

Unless it’s patented/protected by Microsoft, please consider making a similar function for WorkLink Create.  It would save us a ton of authoring effort, and provide our users with a very consistent "attention director".

 

One way to implement it would be by adding a toggle to the UI Editor.  When enabled, another field appears that allows author to choose an object from Step Hierarchy.

 

When the user experiences the scenario, what they will see in the step is a dotted line animating from the UI panel to the object in scene.

 

Here is a good explanation of Microsoft’s function:  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/mixed-reality/guides/hololens-app-dotted-line

 

Here is a YouTube video which shows a Guides dotted line at 00:37 time:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h86OJT9OPo

 

Thanks for your consideration!

 

Andy

4

• 

  Gilles Van de Sompel

  • October 27, 2022 17:55

  Hi Andy,

  There's indeed a lot of user value to be found in that solution, also for example more easily finding objects that are out of frame/view.

  I created a ticket for it and get back to you once we did more discovery on the technical possibilities. (Internal reference 2883)

  We also need to figure out how that behavior would work across all platforms, as the current HoloLens experience has a detached "UI panel" while the iOS and Android experiences have on screen UI. 

  Thank you.

  1
• 

  Andrew Hale

  • October 28, 2022 16:37

  Hi Gilles-

   

  Thanks again for considering our input!

   

  Yeah, the tablet implementation could be tough to design to look and work well.  If it were a straight line, and the user wasn’t looking in the right direction, the line might not be visible to them.  It probably needs to be a curvy line, emitting from the tablet in the direction of the tablet’s camera, with one of the line’s centers of curvature fixed at a point near the bottom of the display, just in front of the device.

   

  Take your time with it and have fun!  Your teammate Bryce has been giving us lots of helpful authoring tips to move users around equipment more efficiently using inset camera views.  We’re happy to keep working with those while you consider a good design.

   

  Thanks again,

   

  Andy

  0

Please sign in to leave a comment.