VR UX Design: MIT Virtual Reality Symphony Orchestra

Reality, Virtually Hackathon at MIT Media Lab

Creating an Educational Experience through the Power of VR

Overview

This project was completed during the Reality, Virtually Hackathon that I was invited to participate in at the MIT Media Lab in October of 2017. During this project, I acted as both the Lead UX Designer and Lead 3D Modeler for the application. I (middle) worked directly with the sound designer (seen far left) and developer (far right) to create a seamless VR experience that taught the user about the role of conducting an orchestra. We did this through the interaction of the Leapmotion headset.

Execution

I mapped out the environment (seen below) as well as all of the models within that environment. We determined that there would be a significant amount of instruments to interact with in order to retain the realness of a symphony hall.

Seen below are some of the models that I created. Prior to this project, I had no idea how complex and intricate instruments were (having never played one myself) and I welcomed the opportunity to create new models for the interaction system.

I also had the pleasure of designing the environment that the instruments existed in, which was difficult as the instruments had to be visible and understandable from a new user perspective.

Once we had the environment and the conducting motions mapped out, we started to place our objects into our environments.

Our developer was able to play-test each instrument interaction in it’s entirety, as well as have it paired with an instrumental accompaniment – created by our sound designer.

Final Result

This project was an incredible success, and we place in the top 10 teams at the hackathon for both originality in VR and VR Education. I am so proud of my team and the work that we had completed during this short time. It was truly an amazing experience.

Below you can learn more about my ideation and our process as a whole through out this hackathon.