Piano VR is an immersive learning app that brings hands-on piano practice into virtual reality. The product was strong — the lessons worked, the spatial feedback was satisfying — but the menu sitting between the user and the music had grown cluttered over multiple releases.
I worked collaboratively with the team to redesign the menu architecture from the ground up. The goal: cut friction, simplify navigation, and make the experience feel as confident as the lessons inside it.
Designing for a headset isn’t the same as designing for a phone. Distance matters. Depth matters. Where the user’s hands rest matters. A menu that works perfectly on a screen can feel exhausting in VR if the user has to reach, twist, or refocus their eyes too often.
The original menu had been built screen-by-screen rather than as a spatial system. Items lived at inconsistent depths. Buttons were sized for a 2D screen, not for arm’s-reach interaction. The first thing was to audit every screen and treat the menu as a 3D environment rather than a flat UI ported into VR.
Watched real users navigate the existing menu. Mapped every place they hesitated, missed a target, or pulled the headset off to recover. The data made the priorities obvious.
Rebuilt the menu structure with fewer top-level items. Grouped lesson types, practice modes, and settings into clear spatial zones — each at a comfortable focal distance.
Placed the most-used controls within natural reach. Pushed secondary settings further back. Used scale and depth to signal importance instead of just colour and weight.
Worked closely with the developers to test each iteration in-headset. What looked right in Figma sometimes felt wrong in VR — that loop was constant.
Delivered a complete spatial UI spec covering button sizes, depth offsets, focal distances, hand-tracking targets, and motion guidelines.
The redesign cut menu interactions per session significantly. Users got from intent to playing the piano faster. Critically, the menu started feeling like part of the room rather than an interface bolted on top.
This project deepened my conviction that XR design is going to be one of the most important UX disciplines of the next decade — precisely because so few rules are settled. Spatial UX rewards designers who think about presence, ergonomics, and attention rather than just visual hierarchy.
The full write-up — with screenshots, before-and-after comparisons, and the design decisions behind each iteration — lives on Medium.