Apple: XR Presentation Tool

Role

Lead Designer: The goal of this project was to bring clarity to a brief that had little defintion. I framed the problem with user context in order to narrow down the scope illustrate a novel cross-platform MR presentation tool.

Context

Create a new mixed reality version of a presentation tool. How can new technologies enhance the user experience and create more engaging content?

Techniques

UI/UX, 3D modeling, Concept design, Motion design, XR design

Framing

Why: Utilizing emerging technologies presentation tools can be made more engaging, interactive, and help with storytelling.

Who: Creators/Presenters. The Creator is the individual who is making the presentation on behalf of themselves or other stakeholders. Their goal is to design a presentation that has compelling and relevant content.

Where/When: An architectural firm is giving a presentation to various stakeholders about how and why they are re-imagining a retail store, using the physical space as context.

What: A 3D UI, an MR display, and a phone input device.

Brainstorm & Ideation

Starting with broad concepts for flow, interaction, form language, affordances, and features, I narrowed down the ideas to the most viable.

UX Flow

When creating a new presentation the user has the option of creating a "3D" or "Contextual" scene. This allows for the output to be either location independent or anchored to a specific physical space.

Highlights:

Viewer or Creation mode
Viewer mode is akin to cloud-based conferencing tools, such as BlueJeans, Zoom or Hangouts
Pairing phone before the ability to interact

Companion App

When entering into the companion app the user is given the option to load a recent presentation, search for a presentation or load a contextually based public presentation. Public presentations are surfaced based on the user's geolocation and are generated by other Creators that have made them accessible to anyone in the area.

Presenter Context Menu

In this mode, a push press on the select button would expose the editable properties of focused content. The focused hover state uses a glowing shader for the group items. This feature allows the Presenter to edit various properties with ease.

Viewer Context Menu

In this mode, a push press on the select button would expose designated editable properties (by the Creator) of focused content. Editable content is indicated by a red notification. This feature allows the Viewer to engage with content based on the parameter set by the Presenter.

Controller UI

Controler: The control on the left allows for circular scrolling, arrow tap, and selection. The right side is a touchpad that allows for translation. The bottom buttons on the right allow for a back command and a context menu when highlighting an object.

Voice: Voice enables text input, searching content, placing content, changing object properties, etc.

Scale & Rotation: A push press on the center selection button on the right would expose rotation and scale properties. Positional and anchoring properties could be controlled through a selection menu and touchpad on the main controller

3D UI

A lighter color scheme was chosen along with select colors used judiciously to call attention to important information. This helps to differentiate the UI from the real world while focusing the user's attention on what's important.

Object supported shaders would signify highlighted + selected states to provide feedback to the user.

Presentation Layer

The Viewer and Creator/Presenter can toggle on/off layers of a presentation, revealing contextually relevant content based on where the user is looking. Below illustrates the concept of a "heat map" based on user paths within a store and a furniture visualization use case.