The Product
CoSpaces is a platform that lets users create interactive 3D worlds, animations, and virtual reality (VR) experiences. It offers a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop tools and coding features, enabling educators, students, and creators to design immersive environments for learning, storytelling, and creative projects.
Challenge
- To deliver an MVP that allowed for launch of a browser-based content creation tool and necessary viewer apps on both iOS and Android enabling use of google cardboard headsets, within 6 months.
My Role
- • Research
- • UX design
- • UI design
- • Prototyping
- • Wireframing
- • Presentations
- • Design spec.
- • Creation and quality assurance.
Results
- A creation tool working across main browsers on desktop, and iOS and Android viewer apps published to corresponding stores. All launched within the set deadline.
Empathize
- Research
- To get things started, I carried out some initial research in to current VR (Sketchfab) and general creation software (goAnimate, Quartz Composer and Tinkerplay). From this product, we established a UX strategy and set of requirements.
Define
The UX strategy
I then worked with the team to sketch out ideas for the user experience flow. We established the simplest flow possible for a 6 month product release. A main decision here was to restrict the creation tool to desktop only for the time being and how we would direct users to viewing in conjunction with a mobile phone and google cardboard headset.
Ideate
- Designing for desktop, and mobile apps
- For the desktop browser-based software, I sketched solutions for a dashboard and in-Project options – offering functionality to enable the user to name, duplicate, share and publish projects and scenes within a project and re-order items.
Simultaneous to this, I worked on the mobile app and tablet designs (for both iOS and Android) which would allow VR environment viewing via a smartphone and (for example) a google cardboard viewer. This helped in identifying the biggest challenges to consistency. I then resolved these by iterating sketches and creating and testing Axure prototypes until signed off by stakeholders.
Design & Development
- Design specification
- At this stage, I created the necessary screen specifications for mobile, tablet and desktop using Sketch.
- I also created some animations using Keynote and Principle to better communicate specific interactions to developers (where necessary).
The Sketch artboards (individual layouts) were then exported in to Zeplin (software application) projects and handed over to developers.
Alongside the individual task specs, I created a UI library which enabled easy reference.
Outcome
Upon product release, the market reception was positive and the number of registered users grew steadily to 50,000 in 6 months. There was a particularly large uptake and adoption from the schooling systems in South Korea, USA and UK.
Tools used
- Pen & paper. Sketch, Zeplin, Principle, Keynote, CoSpaces desktop app., Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, Phone 6s, Google Nexus 5, Axure, YouTrack, Evernote.