Hello Microsoft!
I'm Jimmy, an explorer, friend, and designer at Spatial.
Spatial is about spaces… like Club Penguin, but for adults.
Pivoting from VR meetings, to NFT galleries, to a metaverse.
Prototyping is my jam. I am happy when design is fluid.
I've been talking to computers since I was thirteen…
& I write every day, to understand myself and the world.
Later, I feed entries into Copilot to learn about myself and grow
I'm excited about the human aspect of Copilot, and voice interfaces.
Because my work at Spatial is so out-of-the-box, I'm going to start with a tactical project.
Spatial Edit Mode
Addressing common customer requests for space decoration
Role — Lead Designer & PM
From our Discord, we've known that creators were generally frustrated when decorating their spaces.
1) Lost objects (4 asks)
Creators often misplaced objects in inaccessible areas, eating up storage and pushing them past the limits for their paid Spatial+ SaaS plan.
2) Slow decoration (2 asks)
3D Assets are added one-by-one through a modal, and one of our most requested features is the ability to drag and drop assets into a space.
3) Unclear storage limits (11 asks)
Creators often misplaced objects in inaccessible areas which ate up storage, pushing them past the limits for their paid plan and causing frustration.
4) Clunky controls (2 asks)
Unlike regular 3D tools, our editing mode has always focused on accessibility. Such we lack the transform gizmos that are industry standard.
5) Locked camera views (3 asks)
Objects in Spatial are moved with sliders. Your camera perspective is locked to your avatar, so it's difficult to place objects in high places.
6) No mistake correction (6 asks)
When you accidentally move an object to the wrong position, it's hard to move it back in a precise manner with no way to undo/redo.
7) Tracking issues (24 asks)
There is no way to see a list of all your objects in scene other than walking up to each one. Stuff gets lost, eating up storage without you knowing.
8) Outdated interface (2 asks)
From our multiple pivots, all of our panels, menus, and controls for object control modes were antiquated and mismatched to our new styles.
Diving into a list of feedback, I gathered our design team and gathered the most requested improvements.
Considerations
2 week timeline
1 available engineer
Context
Now, time to make sense of it all and dig into the problems.
You can have many assets in your space, but no record of them
Uploaded items would get trapped behind walls, and be lost forever
It's hard to decorate high places, because your player is ground-level
Our users wanted drag & drop, but assets were added through a big modal
We were unforgiving with positioning mistakes, with no way to undo actions
We also lacked a lot of the precision transform controls common to 3D tools
35 requests total
More than anything, our creators were frustrated about lost items eating up storage, pushing them to more expensive plans without communication of storage limits.
Before solving, I hopped on a call with our engineer, Dongphil, to understand what was on his plate for the next two weeks, so I could decide what to prioritize.
Solution
Now, time to make sense of it all and dig into the problems.
Spatial has chrome that outlines the screen, it was designed to be simple
Yet, more robust editing tools have panels to collect complex actions
So on Day 2/10, I moved to map our sorted customer requests to patterns common in other editor tools.
Days 3-6, I spent mapping the top priority items to development phases
During this process, I communicated with Dongphil every day to uncover which features were both high impact and feasible in the short time that we had.
From our collaboration, I discovered on Day 4 that duplicate objects need to be deleted as a group, so I simplified the design without or burying it in a toggle
On Day 6, Dongphil executed a V1 that solved our creators' key issues: knowing their storage, and seeing all their assets in view.
We also shipped a freeform camera that let users reach and decorate those high ceilings
Due to a lack of time or Unity resources, I made a fast decision to scope down other ideas, like zoom to object and drag & drop
I also cut gizmos, but we were able to add that in later with more Unity resources.
Here is what we shipped — featuring a photo of me and my friends at the Golden Gate
During this sprint, I was using components that another designer was owning & vice versa
And so I advocated for and defined a 'library' process in our shared working file
When new requirements arose, we'd ping the component owner and they'd make an update
It helped us stay in sync! We later brought the components into our main design system.
Learnings
In this project, I learned to prioritize fast, communicate proactively, and bias to action.
1) Lost objects (4 asks)
Creators often misplaced objects in inaccessible areas, eating up storage and pushing them past the limits for their paid Spatial+ SaaS plan.
2) Slow decoration (2 asks)
3D Assets are added one-by-one through a modal, and one of our most requested features is the ability to drag and drop assets into a space.
3) Unclear storage limits (11 asks)
Creators often misplaced objects in inaccessible areas which ate up storage, pushing them past the limits for their paid plan and causing frustration.
4) Clunky controls (2 asks)
Unlike regular 3D tools, our editing mode has always focused on accessibility. Such we lack the transform gizmos that are industry standard.
5) Locked camera views (3 asks)
Objects in Spatial are moved with sliders. Your camera perspective is locked to your avatar, so it's difficult to place objects in high places.
6) No mistake correction (6 asks)
When you accidentally move an object to the wrong position, it's hard to move it back in a precise manner with no way to undo/redo.
7) Tracking issues (24 asks)
There is no way to see a list of all your objects in scene other than walking up to each one. Stuff gets lost, eating up storage without you knowing.
8) Outdated interface (2 asks)
From our multiple pivots, all of our panels, menus, and controls for object control modes were antiquated and mismatched to our new styles.
While we weren't able to address every customer request, we hit the most common ones given constraints
On launch, we improved editing for 300k creators and used the feature to pitch Walmart on a $2 million deal
I just showed a practical project…
Now, here's a really cool one—my favorite
Not all of the work at Spatial is grounded in the customer.
Finding product market fit, we've had to work under high ambiguity
My first project landed us on WIRED, and we grew from 8k MAU to 100k
We were for meetings, but any meeting (like this one) requires an invite
You need an invite to the party.
Without interactivity, we grew two million stunning, yet empty spaces
Something unique to our process is our high-fidelity design sprints
Solving for retention, not growth, we landed on an idea during one of these
And so… I present
Spatial Quests
Giving people something to do
Start a Quest
Lumber Shredder
Ever since your dad got a degree in Forestry from the University of British Columbia, he has been raving about the lumber industry.
Earn the Forest Fire badge
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Heroic Fisherperson
Your daughter is hungry, and there is nobody around to feed her. Wait... bruh, that's your job! Dinner needs to be ready in 30... oh no.
Earn the Sabi Dad badge
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Role — Lead Designer
We needed to help creators guide visitors through an experience.
But at that time, people could only create spaces from templates.
Before the sprint, I started by auditing how people unfamiliar with Spatial used it.
Like Youtube, we are a product built for everybody — so I tested at a coffee shop.
Most common remark: "It's beautiful, but I don't know what to do here."
For a metaverse to work, we needed more custom and retentive asynchronous experiences on the platform
There was an explorer side and a creator side, and I began by mapping where the explorer side could fit
Despite the simplicity of this widget, were many states to manage
Exploring every arrangement, I landed on putting the widget here.
During this process, I communicated with engineers and our PM Will Chang to synthesize and adapt patterns common to successful platforms like Zepeto and Roblox
We based the design on a "Meta Loop," a habit pattern common in gaming
From early testing, I knew that hiding the feature in an icon would increase risk and hamper discoverability
I explored many different layout options, avoiding the feeling of "a list of chores"
This was the project that made me fall in love with motion, and prototype with Framer
Sneak into the doctor's office on the west wing of the hospital
To highlight that task at any time, I broke it out of the widget
Tahoe Exploration
There's a lake here, and a cabin, and—oh my god… is that a bear? It's a black bear, those things are nasty.
Check out the Black Bear
When a user joins the space, the quest expands to show its location, then collapses to show the first task to be done
De Neve Dungeon
I told you there was a secret club here. You didn't listen to me. We can't just sneak into somewhere this boujee!
Plan an escape
And tasks chain into each other, and reveal more quests set by the creator.
Theo's Playdate
Now that you're phasing into preschool, you're gonna need to know how to play with others… who's first?
Play with Thomas
Play with Jayson
Play with Sasha
You can expand to pick between which task you want to track
Quests also chain into each other, recommending more quests
Big Bear Love
Cabin trip game where players explore snowy woods, solve puzzles, build friendships, and discover love.
Check into the cabin
We set to create a flywheel effect through the best spaces on our platform
And also implemented markers that would expand in the 3D space to guide you towards any given tracked 3D task
To launch without overcomplicating the feature for creators
Start a Quest
Trampoline Mania
There has never been a better time to jump on a Trampoline than today. Why? Because today is national trampoline day. Who's with me?
Earn the Zippie badge
chevron_right
Lumber Shredder
Ever since your dad got a degree in Forestry from the University of British Columbia, he has been raving about the lumber industry.
Earn the Forest Fire badge
chevron_right
Heroic Fisherperson
Your daughter is hungry, and there is nobody around to feed her. Wait... that's your job! Dinner needs to be ready in 30... oh no.
Earn the Sabi Dad badge
chevron_right
Start a Quest
Lumber Shredder
Ever since your dad got a degree in Forestry from the University of British Columbia, he has been raving about the lumber industry.
Earn the Forest Fire badge
chevron_right
Heroic Fisherperson
Your daughter is hungry, and there is nobody around to feed her. Wait... bruh, that's your job! Dinner needs to be ready in 30... oh no.
Earn the Sabi Dad badge
chevron_right
I kept designs for multi-quest and badge (extrinsic rewards) back-pocket
I phased the design to prioritize our customers at the time first — NFT creators who wanted to label their art
In a later project, I tied quests and badges to a rewards system on the platform
And made a store to redeem those rewards - learning Blender, Unity, React, and Git
It was a self-started project with two other designers that not many people believed in.
It became the highest-monetized space on the platform and allowed creators and improved discoverability for creator monetization.
Jayson Hanh
Product Designer
Motion graphics wizard from Savannah College of Art and Design. Known for his love of chocolate chip cookies and plain food.
Yoonwoo Lee
Product Designer
Product Designer, 3D prodigy, master of Blender. Always surrounded by cute animals, cats, dogs, and chairs—real or otherwise.
Props to my partners Jayson & Yoonwoo.
Here's what we launched with.
Though we wanted to increase Day-30 retention, this project moved Day-1 retention by 3.74x for all quest completors.
We doubled down on making the platform more interactive, and pivoted again from NFT galleries to a metvaerse for Unity UGC
Human connection.
In an age where technology is rooted in consumption, I imagine a future where it requires engagement.
Already, there are whispers about AI removing the human capacity for critical thought.
Learnings
In this project, I learned to design in ambiguity, ideate fast to inspire the team, and prototype with speed
Unlike the project rooted in tangible customer requests, there's no answer for what the metaverse should be.
Much of my work at Spatial was grounded in high-fidelity ideation.
Painting a vision, while solving a problem more grand than practical…
