Key Challenges

I joined MR meetings when the project was still in the proof of concept stage, and the implementation took a lot of work to explain and was extremely complex to use. Upon joining the team, I worked with key project stakeholders such as PM, prototypers, researchers, and engineers to better understand user problems through user research and validation and many HCI evaluation methodologies to drive the next iteration of MR meetings. My contributions allowed the team to gain clarity over what problems to solve and how to simplify the experience for VR Workroom users. Following this initial phase, I partnered with key team members to solve critical technical/design challenges to bring the project to a new iteration. My focus was to get the project to a stage where the value the feature offered was clear to internal teams to drive its further development and external release.

The challenges I worked on varied from removing the complexity in existing room scan solutions to allowing Workroom users to quickly understand how MR meetings work before using the feature. Room capture was one of the key components to enable the 1:1 overlap between virtual spaces with existing physical spaces to create a superior feeling of presence for all participants.

Onboarding new users to Mixed Reality meetings posed complex challenges due to the need for existing mental models for users to reference the experience quickly. To solve this problem, I designed and validated multiple solutions, such as special effects and animations, that enabled users to understand MR meetings easily and quickly to shift their focus to participants instead of getting bogged down in the technology.

Existing Workroom patterns worked well in VR but were very limited for augmented reality. This limitation prompted me to identify and solve many new and challenging interaction design challenges never encountered before outside of HCI research labs. For example, I had to rethink Workrooms's core meeting experience to work well in both VR and AR. From how participants move in space to change their seating position to how remote participants see avatars rendered in space.