Edit, 2024: a lot has changed since I published this post — very recently the Apple Vision Pro came to market. While it wasn’t a smash hit, it is exponentially better than any products made when this post was first published.
When designing products for VR, it seems that you need to consider 4 major dissonance effects. These dissonance effects can be used to create moats for products and can help you think through newer experiences. I am particularly excited about the future of VR — it looks like a toy now & is primarily used for gaming, but I believe the VR of the future will look and feel dramatically different from what we see today.
Focusing Effect: when you put a VR headset on, you are ultra focused. Nothing in your real physical world matters anymore. Distractions are dramatically less likely than a user being on a computer / their phone. The friction to remove the headset & move away from the dark environment to do a different task is too high, so most of the time users are ultra focused for longer periods.
Time Compression: research shows that users in general think they have spent 50% less time than they actually did when they wear a headset. So a person could be playing for an hour but think they have only spent 30 minutes. What if productive work was done in VR? Would it make us feel more tired than we expected after the tasks? Or does time compression also have the effect of energy preservation?
Higher ranges of motion: a research paper showed that people with knee pain were able to jump higher when wearing a VR headset than without. The primary reason is that the dissonance with reality helps reduce pain symptoms.
Empathy generator: wearing a VR headset gives you an immersive POV; by seeing the world in the immersive POV of a different individual, you are more likely to generate empathy for others.
The next big thing will start out looking like a toy. — Chris Dixon