UX for XR—NASA JPL

Overview

A semester-long applied research project with NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, prototyping a HoloLens interface for engineers to navigate large CAD model hierarchies in mixed reality.

Context

The brief: imagine how a JPL engineer might use the HoloLens inside their existing workflow—not as a toy, but as a working instrument for handling complex 3D model structures. We worked from the constraints backward (field of view, occlusion, hand ergonomics) to interactions engineers actually needed: traversing model trees, isolating sub-assemblies, annotating, comparing.

Approach

1. 01

   Led UX design across a six-person NYU team, from stakeholder interviews with JPL engineers to interaction specification.

2. 02

   Storyboarded and paper-prototyped interactions—low-fidelity, tactile, fast to discard.

3. 03

   Built the working prototype in Unity for the HoloLens, iterating on gaze, gesture, and voice affordances.

4. 04

   Ran rapid iteration cycles against client demos with the JPL team.

Outcomes

• — Functional HoloLens prototype delivered to the NASA JPL team.
• — Interaction patterns documented for future XR tooling in engineering contexts.

Gallery