develUP- Interactive VR Experience

Challenge: Design an immersive experience with a foundation in virtual reality and consideration of a UN17 goal.

This design challenge was made in collaboration with fellow student designer Alex Lowenthal. I am so grateful for her expertise and collaboration skills. Through this project, I was introduced to Blender for designing and rendering our 3D elements. With the help of online resources and models, we were able to rig and render several scenes in Blender.

Overview: develUP provides real life parenting scenarios for expectant or current parents to gain experience and guidance in several areas. We selected one of the UN17 goals and addressed it throughout the design process. This immersive experience is based in VR with an onboarding app through your phone.

This project began with research exploration including video game benchmarking, competitor analyses, and the study of research articles regarding parenthood’s impact on confidence and stress. This step gave us insight to areas that current parenting platforms are missing the mark on and how they are doing well. Through several research articles sourced from The National Library of Medicine, we learned more about the emotional impact of parenting on varying levels.
After completing prior research, Alex and I curated our user personas and task flows. This helped us to address our goals and stay attentive to the deeper message. During this step we recognized how VR headsets are uncomfortable when worn for long periods. This inspired us to incorporate UX/UI design to the project, by wire framing screens for our onboarding app. Following this, we began brownboxing and sketching inside of VR. Through user testing we discovered attention areas and perspective for our UI elements.
Creating the visuals for develUP comprised of two parts: 2D elements and 3D elements. Our 2D elements were designed intentionally, for ease of understanding, calming effects, and gender neutral style. Then we jumped on in with 3D modeling one of our tasks, which included a changing table and baby. With the use of free models, we designed our 3D figures and scene in a calming gradient atmosphere. The goal here was to immerse the user into the task and leave all other stresses behind.
Within our baby form, I rigged the body and face to reflect the action steps in our highlighted task. Poses included laying down and sitting up with leg and arm movements. Through facial rigging, the baby begins the scene upset then ends the scene happy and content. We finalized our scenes by superimposing our 2D UI elements on top of our 3D rendered scenes.