I think my favourite slide I've ever written/presented was just a picture of a family on a sofa, over which I talked about why the sofa is the most important media device in the household.

My theory is that the space that "TV" fits into people's lives simply hasn't really changed much. Generally speaking, people's days tend to fall into a pattern; they go to work, they come home, deal with the various chores that have to be dealt with, and then at the end of the day they sit down on the most comfortable chair in the house - which has a TV in front of it - and they watch TV.

(Original post here)

My point is that if you're looking at media behaviour and habits, its tempting to focus on the content of the media (ie. what are the programmes on TV that people are choosing to watch?), but often much more enlightening to pay attention to the context (ie. When are they watching? Where are they watching? Who are they watching with? Why are they watching?)

In other words, if you want to really understand television viewing behaviour, if you split things into "what is on the television" and "everything else", its by looking at the "everything else" where you'll find the real insights.² (I've already written far too many words about 'what is television' - thats not the topic of this post.)

Back when the iPad came out, the tech industry (and the media industry - which by that point was already locked into orbit around the tech industry) got into a big debate about what sort of device it was. Was it for 'content consumption' - that is, for watching videos and reading? Or was it for 'content creation' - making videos, editing photos and so on?

As is often the case with that kind of binary 'either/or' debates, the real answer is "neither".

In isolation, an iPad⁴ is a device that is technically capable of fulfilling either role; neither answer is really "wrong". However- no matter how well Excel runs on an iPad, if you really want to do some sort of work with a spreadsheet (for example), then what really matters is that you probably don't want to be losing half of your screen to a virtual keyboard - so if what you are doing involves any sort of data entry, you really want to be using a 'proper', physical keyboard.

If you're using a physical keyboard, you want/need something to physically put it on - your lap, maybe, but more likely some sort of table. Or desk.

That means you want your tablet screen to be propped up behind the keyboard - which in turn means you probably don't really want to be relying on the touch-screen interface; you're better off with some sort of trackpad built into the keyboard than to be reaching over and holding your arm up for any extended length of time.

Congratulations! You've transformed your tablet into the form factor of a desktop computer. So why not go the whole hog; connect a mouse and plug into a larger monitor?

Now, to be clear there's nothing wrong with that. Personally, I'm starting to think that for a 'personal device'¹ I'd actually rather have a tablet that I can also use as a laptop than a laptop that is kind of awkward to use anywhere other than at my desk. (I do find it weird that, if you wander round an Apple Store, unless you know what to look for, it can be difficult to tell the difference between a keyboard-equipped iPad and a Macbook at first glance these days...) Its just that the software solution of a spreadsheet configures your behaviour in a way that is best suited to the form factor of a desktop computer.

The point is that if you're thinking about a binary choice like "creation or consumption", you need to be thinking about more than just the device itself. The really important thing to think about is the context that you're using it in. Is a touch screen tablet at your desk as good as a laptop? Perhaps - it probably depends on how you're using it. (Is it flat on your desk, or propped up on a stand? Is that going be bad for your neck and back if you are in that physcial postion over the space of a few hours? How important is a keyboard or mouse/trackpad for your particular kind of work? Are you occasionally tapping the screen to press buttons etc. or constantly swiping/drawing/etc.?) But is a laptop as "good" as a tablet when you're sitting on a sofa? Almost definitely not.

The question that matters is less about whether the device is best suited for creation or consumption, but what is the physical context that it's best for using in. Sitting on the sofa is a context much better suited to 'consumption' (relaxed, maybe in the company of family); sitting at your desk is a context much better suited to 'productivity'. For a laptop, "sitting at your desk" is usually the context. For an iPad, its simply "sitting". That could be at your desk, on a sofa, in bed, on the toilet, on a bus, a train, even in the Economy section of a plane.

What happens when you aren't sitting? Well, an iPad works perfectly well standing up - if you've got both hands free (one to hold it, the other to be able to reach the whole touchscreen.) Not as good as a phone - but far better than a laptop. If you're just reading a book or doing something with minimal interaction then thats fine - if you need to interact a bit more, then a smaller and lighter device you can use one-handed is probably a better fit to the context.

Again; if you want to really understand 'iPad behaviour', if you split things into "the iPad" and "everything else", I think its by paying attention to the "everything else" where you'll find the real insights.

Headset Fit

But that's a 10+ year old debate. Now, we've got a new rising class of 'computing devices' appearing; headsets⁵. Meta have started talking about 'productivity focus' alongside gaming, with the Quest Pro released last year, a Quest 3 coming later this year - and the first generation of what will presumably be a series of Apple headsets hitting the market in the new year seem to be deliberately avoiding a focus on games and gaming. (While at the same time making it very clear that Apple are taking gaming on all the other Apple platforms seriously...)

So, is VR/AR for gaming, or for productivity? Again, there isn't a really a wrong answer; its the wrong question. Its like asking whether pubs are for spending time with friends, family or colleagues; the only sensible answer is "yes".

One of the fun things about talking about VR in its current stage of adoption/usage is that its pretty clear that the 'killer app' hasn't yet arrived - which means there's plenty of room for speculation about what the 'killer app' might look like. General consensus among people who seem to know what they are talking about seems to be that it's going to be around 'social' (in its broadest definition - including work meetings etc.)- but I'm still not convinced that a headset is something people will want to wear for very long, and unless you've got enough people using them at the same time the potential for 'social activities' are always going to be somewhat limited. (Its a bit like the difference between "the internet" being a thing you dialled into, and being an always-on connection; if you're wearing a headset, you're much more likely to be interested in something going on in a 3D virtual world than if you aren't.)

So, the first question is whether games will be 'good enough' to get enough headsets on enough heads for enough time so that 'social' use cases will make sense - or whether the 'social' use cases will be compelling enough to sell headsets by themselves.

Or maybe there's another use case?

I've had a play with connecting a laptop to VR (on a Quest 2), and one of the interesting things you can do is set up your virtual screens with almost infinite freedom. Want a 14" laptop screen at arms reach, like your desktop? No problem. Want a massive cinema screen thats twenty feet away? Sure - you can do that too. How about both? How about a massive cinema screen playing a video, a laptop-type screen up close to write in, another screen to off to the side in portrait orientation so you can glance at your email inbox, another screen on the other side with a social feed, and a screen up above with the BBC news headlines ticking along? Unlike physical space and screens, virtual space and screens are effectively free - you can go crazy.

So, why not?

Well- there are a couple of reasons.

Firstly - its cool for about 5 minutes, then after that its just a lot of distractions and clutter that you want to get our of your virtual space if you want to actually get anything done. (Without the limits of real-world space/devices, 'going crazy' can drive you... crazy.) How useful it is when the novelty factor wears off is still an unanswered question. But in the future, headsets will be lighter - batteries will get better (or maybe taken out of the headset altogether), CPUs will get more power efficient (so batteries will get smaller). Maybe headsets will just be wired to your computer, or your phone. It feels like it could be interesting... but not with today's technology.

Secondly - compared to most other screens, VR is still pretty low resolution. I've been spoilt with retina screens on my laptop and phone, and I notice the drop when I move to a 'normal' monitor - it doesn't look as nice, and my eyes get tired faster when I'm reading text for a while. Text in VR (at least, on a Quest 2 headset - which I think is what most people are talking about when they talk about VR experiences in 2023) is lower resolution still - this is stating the obvious, but if you want to read long-form text, a VR headset is probably the worst possible device you can use to do it with. Yes, you can read text on a virtual computer screen in VR fine. But no - you don't really want to read anything longer than the label on a button. (You don't really want to be wearing one of those headsets for hours at a time in general.) Maybe a new generation of headsets³ will bring higher-resolution in a year or two, and reading this back will be a bit like seeing someone proclaiming that smartphones will never be any good for reading or writing based on the keyboards and styluses they were using in 2006 (a common criticism of "mobile internet" used to be that it was like reading a newspaper while looking through a toilet roll)- but for now at least, reading/writing and VR headsets simply aren't a good fit. (I think it is worth noting that a bigger screen that is further away is less of a strain on your eyes - so there is at least a potential for a virtual screen to be 'better' than a physical one.)

Both of those issues feel like a technological problem that at some point will have a technological solution - the kind which is actually more of a business model/profitability problem. And if there is one thing that the big tech companies are very good at doing, its turning a technological problem into a profitable solution.

Thirdly - perhaps the most importantly - a "computer" UI is generally a keyboard and a pointer (mouse or trackpad.) Thanks to a boring data entry job in my early '20s, I learnt to touch type. I generally write without looking at my fingers; its more about muscle memory, not thinking about where any particular key is positioned on the keyboard. Even so, using a physical keyboard in VR doesn't work very well, despite some pretty strong efforts from Meta. There is a neat thing that makes a virtual version of your physical keyboard in VR - but its not quite good enough for a glance at my virtual keyboard/fingers to make me feel confident that I know where my fingers are in relation to my physical keyboard. If anything, its more likely to be misleading than reassuring, and I often find myself trying to squint through the little gap between the headset and my face. Which is a bit rubbish.

The other related issue is that when both your hands are on the keyboard, its not very easy to grab a mouse (or VR controller) when you're effectively blindfolded by a headset. Again, a subtle difference between the physical and virtual location (depth perception in VR isn't quite accurate enough for this to work brilliantly) is enough to be the difference between grabbing a thing and batting it across the room and onto the floor.

Maybe this is a problem that Apple/Meta has already solved - its just a matter of waiting for manufacturing to ramp up and the price point to come down.

That said - I've found the 'virtual whiteboard' in Horizon Workrooms to be great (you hold the Quest controller backwards to use it as a marker), and my virtual handwriting is... well, no worse than my 'real' whiteboard handwriting. (Which is to say... pretty illegible - but I don't feel that I can 100% blame the technology. The Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro is a great device, but I still can't use it to write legibly.)

So- I think there's definitely a space for VR in a 'work' or 'productivity' environment; it has a useful role it can play. But for a 'work' context? No - sitting at my desk and getting things done isn't a context where I want to be wearing a headset as a 'default'.

To give that sentence some framing/context; a keyboard and mouse/trackpad is effectively an 'enforced' default for using a 'real' computer, and some sort of keyboard is an ever-present option for a tablet/phone. I could be happy to have an always-on webcam as a default, I could be happy to wear earphones as a default (and sometimes I do.) But I expect that a headset is always going to be a peripheral that you only use when you really need it, and take off once you're done with whatever task you put it on for.

In fact, the sort of environment I want to be wearing a headset also doesn't involve standing up; I want to be sitting down. Thats not a great way to play Beatsaber or Superhot or any of the other good VR games I like right now - but it doesn't seem like VR game developers have really embraced the idea of 'sitting down' games much. (I don't really know why - I'd love to have a go at something like Rocket League or Mario Kart in VR...)

Perhaps thats the real problem with VR; "computers" are very well suited to the desktop; the place you "sit up" when you need to focus for hours at a time. (I say that as I'm experiencing some lower back pain, probably at least partly due to not "sitting up" properly when at my desk.) Tablets are very well suited to the sofa; the place you go at the end of the day, when jobs are done and you have time to relax and be comfortable. Games consoles are similarly well suited to sitting in front of the TV. Phones are well suited to... well, pretty much anywhere you've got a hand free- sitting, standing, walking around - whatever.

VR today seems to be trying to fit into a gap in people's lives that doesn't really exist - standing up and waving your arms around while blindfolded simply isn't something people do as part of their normal routine, so expecting an as-yet-unclear killer app to fit into this context is... well, its a bit weird. A bit like expecting people to go to the cinema when there aren't any films to see, or go to the airport when there aren't any flights, or go to a shopping centre when all the shops are closed. (Yes - some people do... but not very many - if you're going to an airport when there aren't any flights, then thats probably the point.)

I think that disconnect between what VR can do best and where VR fits is the gap. Its not going to be a regular gaming experience when most people who want to play games tend to do it at the end of the day, when they are physically at their most exhausted and want to sit down and be physically comfortable. Its not going to be a social experience unless either there's a bunch of people a.) in that virtual space and b.) who want to socialise (which is an issue if you're only putting on a headset for a short time), or there's "events" that will draw people in. While Fortnite is a space that my kids could drop into and expect to find their friends there, its also Fortnite that have pushed ahead with creating events that make people want to be there at a particular time.

I think where VR is right now is that its being designed around what happens when you put on a headset - making the virtual experience as good as it possibly can be. The problem is that's only part of the picture; the virtual experience is being built for a physical space that doesn't really exist for most people. The place we're expected to use VR is something like a 2mx2m unobstructed space. We're missing the context. A lot of people who might be able to buy the headsets simply don't have that kind of space - or at least, they can't wave their arms around while blindfolded (and perhaps screaming) without being incredibly disruptive for anyone else in the household who might want to, say, watch TV or sit on the sofa and relax.

Maybe in the future, we'll all make room for a dedicated, out-of-the-way VR space - just like how we've made space in our homes for big TV screens, computer desks etc. Its kind of hard to see how we get from here to there though - at least, not with the property market looking like it does at the moment in the places where most people live.

So (having said how I try to avoid making predictions), my prediction is that when the 'killer app' for VR does arrive, it will work perfectly well when you are sitting down. Because although it isn't the way VR is currently designed, 'sitting down' is a space in people's lives that it could actually fit much better than 'standing in a 2m by 2m space that isn't in everybody's way'.

For one, the whole embarassing legs issue simply stops being an issue if you're sitting down; the presence of legs becomes as irrelvant as a TV news reader's choice of trousers.
For another, it becomes no more disruptive to other household members than, say, using a phone/tablet on the sofa while someone else is watching TV in the same room.
Thirdly, it moves VR a step closer to being something you can comfortably do for longer sessions- and the more time you're in VR, the more likely it becomes that someone you would like to share a virtual space with will also be in VR, making it more likely to be an actual social experience.

That third one is the real problem - most VR applications are designed for a standing experience. Meta Quest will let you choose your 'home space' - it could be an alpine cabin, an apartment, a spaceship etc. But all of them are built for you to be standing in the middle of an open virtual space. (Some of them even have sofas in them - you just can't sit on them...)

Sitting down also means that you don't need to worry about being 'untethered' - don't get me wrong; the freedom of movement using the Quest 2 is great. But if I could use it sitting down while plugged into something, then I could also have a lighter headset (no battery) and better graphics (from a dedicated computer rather than something built around a mobile CPU.)

I've been fairly dismissive of PSVR so far, and its easy to see reasons why Oculus is a better 'gateway' to VR than what Sony have built so far. But recently, I've started to wonder whether this focus on a 'standing experience' might be a blind spot for Meta - and a massive opportunity for Sony to do something more interesting with PSVR2.

Last year, I went through the process of removing all my 'work' stuff from my personal laptop- thanks to a work laptop upgrade- and I'm still debating whether I want to do the same the other way round and pull all my 'personal' data off my 'work' laptop. "My" personal laptop has just become my wife's personal laptop though, and I'm not quite sure whether that means its now "our" laptop or "her" laptop that I happen to have a login for. Either way - its not really "my" laptop any more... ↩
Its a bit like the idea of 'figure and ground' - paying attention to why a certain part of the bigger picture commands our attention can be interesting. Which sounds a little navel-gazing, but still... ↩
By which I mean affordable headsets - as far as I'm concerned, Apple's Vision Pro is a dev kit; as a consumer platform, its interesting - as a consumer device, its still at least a generation away. ↩
(more to the point, a tablet computer - but as the iPhone reconfigured the idea of the smartphone, 'iPad' and 'tablet' were still synonymous at the time) ↩
I'm not sure if "glasses" and "headsets" are two different classes of devices; tablets and smartphones are fundamentally the same technology but different classes of devices. But I can imagine a future where the technology of "headsets" can fit into the form factor of "glasses" (my bet is thats the general trajectory that Apple are betting on), so for now I'm assuming that 'headsets' works as a catch-all term. ↩

Some Random Nerd

Headset Fit