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Inner Space: Case Study
Building for researchers and students who need different things
InnerSpace lab trailer
Context
Building for two distinctly different groups
I had two groups to answer to on this project, and they needed different things from the same build. As product and XR developer at InnerSpace, a research lab using Meta Quest 3's hand tracking to build educational tools, I was brought on to design an experience that visualizes a cellular process: building an insulin monomer, then a hexamer, and triggering a reaction with GLP1, exactly where the science required it.
What was needed
Precise enough for researchers, simple enough for students,
Researchers needed the molecular structures aligned exactly right to stay biologically accurate. Students needed to understand what was happening with no science background and no patience for a lesson before they could start.
Work I did
Diagnosing and solving a usability and accuracy problem
I tested the experience with 10 friends in my apartment, watching how they moved through it and interviewing them afterward.
The clearest problem was the tutorial: it showed the reaction happening, then had the user replicate it, watch then copy. People couldn't reliably tell what they were supposed to place or where. Stakeholders were also clear about a requirement I had to design around: they wanted the experience to teach through the action itself, not through replication after the fact. That's what led me to design what I called the ghost-system, a translucent preview showing exactly where a piece needed to go while the user was still placing it, so the guidance lived inside the action instead of before it.
The second problem from that same testing was physical: manipulating pieces required rotating your hand into uncomfortable positions just to orient something correctly, which multiple people brought up unprompted. I developed a two-hand rotation system to solve this, letting users orient pieces using both hands together instead of twisting one wrist into an awkward angle.
What Changed
Guidance needed dropped from 4 in 5 to almost none
After introducing both fixes together, the number of users who needed manual guidance to complete the build dropped from 4 in 5 to effectively none. The researchers verified the final build against their accuracy requirements just as closely.
What I Learned
Opposing priorities don't always need a compromise, they need the right system
Rigor for the researchers and approachability for the students weren't actually in conflict, they just needed to live in different layers of the same system: precision underneath, simplicity on the surface. A smaller lesson carried over too: touch-and-feel details, like how comfortable a rotation feels in your hand, shape whether someone understands an experience even when they can't articulate why something felt off.
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