In fairness, these issues seem like they’d also affect anyone with long hair in a bun.
Car headrests are a huge issue for my (caucasian) better half, to the point where she vetos car purchases over them. There’s no way she could use one of these headsets either.
I imagine the headrests I’m referring to also a huge pain in the neck (literally —— many of them force you to slouch) for the women in this study, and for most women with long hair.
"When I’ve struggled to put on a headset over a high bun of braids, I temporarily take down the braids. I’m in no position to do or ask that of another woman even if she is a participant in my study. I personally know how time-consuming it can be to get braids or head wraps tied (and what lies beneath a headscarf may be extra personal). Further, a good number of participants didn’t just have big hair, they had hijabs as well, and these, more than any other updo, cannot be removed."
Quite frankly this seems like a non issue. I wear glasses and 3d glasses always are a pain to use but I don't insinuate discrimination. Was the Oculus Go also not designed for Sikhs? The comment about hijabs is ludicrous. The people who want to control their insular culture but also want to be victims in mass culture are infuriating.
if you had read the article you would have realized at no point she's blaming oculus for not designing for african women hair or hijab wearers. She didn't say she felt specifically excluded.
She even concludes by something positive about getting designers to think differently.
It’s one thing if they are complaining that the equipment is not designed for headgear, but I think it’s another thing to say that people want to be victims for not spending time and money to chemically alter their natural hair to be like the majority race’s hair.
There's no difference there as that is just title-cased.
Also, only in a few niches like Twitter is "Black" capitalized and then used as an adjective to describe something to do with black people (e.g. "Black success"), so to everyone else it just sounds like the color since most people don't automatically assume everything is racial.
Though the racial fixation of the article is already belabored as anyone with their hair worn a certain way, like my girlfriend right now, can't even wear hats much less a $1000 VR headset. But the success and popularity of racial essentialism in 2020 is another topic.
> only in a few niches like Twitter is "Black" capitalized
The Associated Press & others have recently changed their style guides to capitalize "Black" when referring to the ethnic group (see links below). This is likely a US-specific style, but it is no longer niche.
I also understood black hair to mean black-colored hair. I was thinking maybe there was either a color sensor issue or maybe it was talking about people in front of the device whose hair color is black.
Interesting article. The two-strap design the author created for the Oculus reminds me of the strap system used for many swimming goggles.
I suppose they have some similar problems to solve; with VR the strap is supporting a fairly heavy load hanging in front of the wearer's face, which would have a tendency to twist off if not held in place firmly. Similarly swimming goggles may twist off when diving into the water, if they aren't firmly held in place. Furthermore the 'big hair' situation seems similar in some ways to the difficulties you can have while wearing a swim cap (with lots of hair under it.)
I, like Palmer Luckey himself, find my Oculus Go subpar-to-unusable because of the fixed IPD. It's been a little better since I bought prescription lenses, but still not great. It's a device designed very much for the average human with little thought given to others.
cool project! i am slightly confused though about the geometry of the solution. i understand from the text that there are two independent straps. but it sort of (not ambiguously) looks like they are connected? perhaps to prevent slippage?
To be fair, I suspect they'll take anyone's money without regard for gender, race or religion. If you ignore the company, I think the lesson we can all learn is that there are obvious ways to make products more universal. In this case, there was a maker willing to adapt the units so it also would have been cool to make the point where the straps attach more amenable to alternate straps being used.
Not to take away from the problem caused by having more hair (I now have the opposite problem) but I think the other issue with a one-size-fits-all design is going to be the gasket against the face.
What in the article do you disagree with? Nowhere does she say that it affects only black women or that it doesn't affect non-black women.
Considering all of the participants in her study were black women and how the headstrap broke with such regularity, I think she can make a valid claim that "the Oculus Go wasn't designed for black hair" without making claims about others.
I agree with you though. It probably affects many non-black women as well.
Car headrests are a huge issue for my (caucasian) better half, to the point where she vetos car purchases over them. There’s no way she could use one of these headsets either.
I imagine the headrests I’m referring to also a huge pain in the neck (literally —— many of them force you to slouch) for the women in this study, and for most women with long hair.