Pressure-Free Interaction

The User Reality: Traditional VR design frequently utilises timers, countdowns, or disappearing text to drive engagement. For users who process information at different speeds, this time pressure induces acute anxiety, undermining performance and leading to session termination.

Research: Primary research at Ysgol y Deri (YYD) indicates that time-limited prompts are a frequent source of "stuck" states and sensory shock during recalibration.

The Openality Standard

Progress must be driven by deliberate user-paced actions. Information must remain on-screen and accessible until the user confirms they are ready to proceed, respecting natural variations in cognitive processing speed

• Constraint: Instructional prompts must not be time-limited; they must not disappear automatically before the user has acted.
• Requirement: Instructional prompts and critical information must persist until the user successfully completes the associated action.

Core Behaviours

• State-Based Persistence - Instructional prompts and critical information persist until the user successfully completes the associated action, removing time pressure and allowing for natural variation in processing speed.

Primary Interaction Patterns

• The Linear Flow System - A system that automatically advances the user through a predefined sequence of steps, only presenting one instruction at a time and preventing access to future steps until the current one is completed.