Tech: MR (Mixed Reality)

Tools: Unity, Unreal Engine, C#, C++, Blueprints, Blender, Houdini, PopcornFX

Hardware: Magic Leap One, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive

Overview:

At Magic Leap, I worked for 3.5 years as a senior interaction engineer/prototyper tasked with delivering the first set of specs and front-end algorithms for input and interaction on Magic Leap's OS and have a patent connected to the work that I completed with Magic Leaps User Interaction | User Experience Team.

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Inputs + Embodied Interactions:

In my role, I prototyped, tested, and delivered interactions and facilitated end-to-end integration in the OS. As an Interaction Prototyper/Engineer, I primarily worked within Inputs and Embodied Interactions.

I delivered embodied interactions for the platform across various inputs: gesture, voice, head targeting, and eye gaze targeting. In our team, interaction concepts were inspired by a broad range of influences in sci-fi and HCI, and grounded designs and prototypes through user testing and close collaboration with engineering. 

Before having the actual hardware (the ML1), our team used VR Hardware (Oculus Rift, HTC Vive) to inform our design concepts and decisions when it came to interactions and inputs. My early prototypes were built on this hardware utilizing Unity and Unreal Engine. Once the early ML hardware was available, all of my prototypes were built off of that hardware to craft MR experiences. Those experiences were built off of a custom platform build of Unity and Unreal Engine.

While there, I build prototypes exploring gesture, voice, totem, and eye gaze for planar interactions, spatial interactions, and direct interactions. I was a part of the developer team that extended the Unity UI system to create our own flavor of Spatial UI called the Eclipse UI which were the building blocks for the UI toolkit.

Over the past 3.5 years that I spent at Magic Leap, not every prototype found its way into the final OS at launch, but I did gain a lot of experience building out novel spatial experience exploring what the web would look like with 3D content, the OOBE, gaming experiences in MR, the architecture of what would become the OS and setting (which was originally built out in Unity).

Working with a headset with a limited field of view running off of a mobile OS on emerging taught me how to create magical experiences under constant constraints.

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