Aurora VR Meditation

Health and Wellness, Game Design & Accessibility

A groundbreaking VR meditation app blending virtual escapism with real-life aromatherapy for a fully immersive well-being experience.

Project Type

School Project

Project Duration

5 weeks

Team Members

Ainur K., Danni Q., & Ziyi S.

Software Used

Unity, Blender, Adobe Photoshop, Premier Pro & Figma

My Roles

Lead UX Researcher, UI/UX Designer,

Game Developer in Unity 3D & Project Manager

Deliverables

✅ A deeply immersive and multi-sensory meditation experience in virtual reality that effectively combines visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile stimuli.

✅ An intuitive user interface that allows users to easily navigate and personalize their meditation journey according to their mood and needs in virtual reality.

Design Impacts

🔹Developed and iteratively enhanced a multi-sensory VR meditation experience in Unity and Figma, leveraging insights from three major development phases to optimize user engagement and satisfaction.

🔹Managed the product development lifecycle from conception to launch with a strong focus on user-centric design, leveraging insights from user testing to refine the design and ensure an accessible and resonant user experience for diverse users.

01 Background

Mental health plays a vital role in our overall well-being, yet living in a bustling city and navigating the pressures of academic life makes it difficult to find moments of peace and connection with nature. As students, we realized firsthand how challenging it can be to escape the stress and immerse ourselves in nature.

Like us, many urban dwellers, whether office employees or students, struggle to access natural environments in their daily routines. This lack of exposure can lead to heightened stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues, highlighting the urgent need for innovative solutions that bring the calming effects of nature to people, even in the midst of busy urban life.

01.1 Product Management

As the Product Manager, Experience Designer, and Unity Developer for Aurora VR Meditation, I took a comprehensive approach, starting with identifying target market and user needs through secondary research, outlining key app features and functionalities.

I collaborated with branding and engineering teams to ensure the app followed the product vision and roadmap. Regular discussions, product demonstrations, and feedback sessions validated that the product met target market needs.

Post Wizard-of-Oz and Alpha version launches, I monitored performance and user feedback, making data-driven decisions based on market analysis for continuous product improvement and evolution.

Product Management Outline

02 Research & Ideation

Method 1 - Surveys & Findings

Questionnaires featuring both qualitative and quantitative inquiries were distributed to 12 NYU students attending classes and residing in New York City. Out of these, 9 students provided their responses.

Method 2 - Competitive Analysis

A Direct Comparison was conducted to look at VR meditation applications from 3 other developers in the Oculus Quest App Store.

Our Competitive Analysis suggests that there are three common user pain points when interacting with the existing VR meditation apps:

Pain Point 1: Lack of Variety

"There is only one environment for me to interact with."

- A user's review for Perfect Beach VR

Pain Point 2: Restricted Mobility

"You can’t walk around in the environments, and you might as well just go sit in front of a tv and meditate."

- A user's review for Guided Meditation VR

Pain Point 3: Lack of Instructions

"There is very little info about how to progress, how to unlock things, or how to fix things. There are no forums, and the discord server is virtually dead."

- A user's review for Maloka VR

03 Design Ideation

To address these challenges, we decided to create Aurora, a VR meditation app that brings the calming effects of nature to urban dwellers. Aurora offers a variety of simulated natural environments designed to help users relax and reduce anxiety from the comfort of their home. Paired with an external multi-sensory device, the app delivers a fully immersive meditation experience, engaging multiple senses for deeper relaxation and mental well-being.

03.1 Mood Board

(click to expand image)

03.2 User Flow Design

(click to expand image)

03.3 Accessibility Design

Accessibility is a vital component of product design, and our Aurora VR Meditation App prioritizes it from the beginning. We conducted thorough research to identify user challenges and adhered to guidelines like the Meta Quest VRC and W3C's XR Accessibility User Requirements.

Our app features a considerate layout, voice commands, text reader, and font size adjustments for an enhanced user experience. Customizability in the app's settings allows for personalized experiences, catering to individual preferences.

We strive to create an inclusive app accessible to all, focusing on user-friendliness, intuitiveness, and enjoyment for everyone, regardless of ability or disability.

Accessibility Guidelines

03.4 UI Design / Branding Style Guide

The Aurora VR Meditation App's style guide is essential for a consistent brand identity. Our team created visual and design elements, including color palette, typography, and imagery, with guidelines for use across marketing materials like the company's website.

We designed a style guide based on accessibility research for VR UI design, using pistachio green as the primary color to evoke a natural, relaxing tone. The app's buttons are designed for immediate feedback and responsive user experience. We employed readable typography in high-contrast colors, with text-to-audio reader functionality to ensure accessibility and inclusiveness.

03.5 Wizard-of-Oz Prototype / First-round User Testing

During the first round of user testing, we aimed to gather feedback on the user experience within the Aurora VR Meditation App. We used a Wizard-of-Oz prototype combining a virtual environment created in Unity, a setting menu created in Figma and a video created in Adobe Premiere Pro to demonstrate the user interface to 10 NYU students, collected their feedback using Google Forms and analysized their responses into quantitative and qualitative data. This allowed us to identify and understand the pain points of their experience with VR meditation apps and refine the functionalities of our app accordingly.

What is our goal?

Our objective was to create a user-centered design and ensure that the app met the needs and expectations of our target audience.

What are we testing?

The level of interest of a VR multi-sensory meditation app from our potential users
The interaction design and interface design within the app

What did we learn?

High importance was placed on accessibility features, with sound caption being a particularly significant aspect.
Branding elements were missing from the app's menu and the layout needed to be re-arrange to accomodate the viewpoints of users in the app's environment.
The aethestic and quality of VR environment in the app needed to be improved.
Onboarding was also identified as an important factor in ensuring a positive user experience, with a manual on the use of controllers being deemed crucial for many users who were new to the Oculus Quest platform.

First Iteration of Aurora's Settings Menu (created in Figma)

First Iteration of Aurora's VR Environment (created in Unity)

Feedback From First-Round User Testing (qualitative & quantitative)

03.6 Prototype Alpha / Second-round User Testing

Building on the insights gained from the first round of user testing, we created a high-fidelity digital prototype in Unity to test the look and feel of the VR experience. To gather further feedback, we video recorded three potential users' interactions with the Aurora Meditation App on Oculus Quest 2 and asked them to document their thoughts through a questionnaire. As the project leader, I facilitated two group discussions to analyze the video recordings and the users' feedback to identify areas for improvement and enhance the overall user experience.

What is our goal?

Our objective was to improve users' experience with the app.

What are we testing?

Ease of use: is the app intuitive and easy to navigate, with clear instructions and prompts for the user?
Accessibility: is the app designed well to accommodate the needs of a wide range of users?
Performance: is the app running smoothly, with minimal lag and no crashes?

What did we learn?

All users mentioned the need of more instruction for them to navigate in the app's virtual environment.
People loved the settings menu attached on their left hand in the virtual environment for them to customize their meditation experience.
The layout of the onboarding pages needed to be improved as users tend to ignore instructions if they are heavily written in text.

Second Iteration of Aurora's VR Environment (created in Unity)

Feedback From Second-Round User Testing (qualitative)

04 Prototype Beta (Final) & App Lauch

External Device Designed for Oculus Quest 2 for a Multi-Sensory Experience (created with Arduino Nano, humidifier sensors and packaging boxes printed using 3D printing technology) - Demo can be viewed HERE.

Download Aurora VR Meditation App