What do you do if your VR design clashes with your client's vision?

Always do full value listening. I make it a habit to dig any concern a few layer deeper until I find the root cause. Often times, what we first hear are self-diagnosis and self-prescription from the client. They usually have the best intentions, so our job as advisor and consultant is make sure we are talking in the same frequency.

“Have a VR app” is hardly a goal. Clients might say that but I know VR itself is a vehicle, not the destination. VR should alleviate certain problems or achieve some new gains. I believe that a good business goal should not contain a single word of the technology being used. Only after the clients successfully articulated their goals can I proceed to advise the technologies that best served them.

Offer expertise with empathy and respect. People love to be educated on an equal ground - as a partner would. VR is relatively new so help clients by navigating through its pros and cons. Demonstrate your experience and lesson learnt. Finally in a confident yet thoughtful manner, offer your recommendations.

Generally, what I am trying to do is to closely follow the design language of the operating system the application is running on. E.g., if your app is targeted towards Meta Quest devices, it can help to either use Meta's samples or create design elements yourself that e.g. closely resemble the UI of the general Meta Quest menu interface. This will help to create consistency across apps and not introduce new confusing elements to users. Furthermore, it will save developers and ultimately the client valuable time by not having to reinvent the wheel.

List out possible VR design alternatives we can execute to achieve our goals. Do some thought experiments on how each scenario will play out. Find out roadblocks early. Don't let these limitations discourage you. Be creative by embracing the constraints. The goal is to plot the most plausible route to our destination.