All the best products that stood the test of time have one thing in common — they solve a problem and they are easy to use. Imagine the world without graphic designers, UX/UI researchers and professional artists. It would be a dull place to live with unnecessary and annoying work.
There's a reason why every upvote on Reddit or fast purchase of your favorite meal on UberEats feels satisfying. There has been a ton of research and work put on making it seamlessly convenient. Same goes for your favorite video games and entertainment systems - resuming your next episode of your current TV series is so easy because it's right there. Or have you ever marveled at game mechanics where you feel the weight of the sword, or a satisfying confirmation of your strategic action?
With AR/VR steadily coming into our daily lives, there's going to be a need for similar quality experience. XR (AR, VR, & MR) in many cases mimics the real world and thus requires a set of unique skills, mainly how to simulate 3D interactions in VR (or AR), incorporating spatial audio design, and thinking ahead of human actions with a different field of view than reality.
It can be hard to imagine how to make the transition to XR from traditional design like print, digital, or game design. That's why we asked professional AR and VR designers who already walked that path about their experiences, and what advice they have for how you can transition into an XR design career.
Accelerate Your Launch Into an XR Design Career
XR Designers Interview Series
XR Designer Interview #1: How Aleatha Singleton Found Her Calling in XR
Aleatha Singleton is an Immersive Tech User Experience Designer (UX design) with over 20 years of experience designing solutions for kiosks, websites, mobile apps, desktop software and extended reality for many well-known and not-so-well-known companies. However, she started her career in traditional 2D design field.
Over the years, Aleatha acquired various skills that make her uniquely qualified to perform and promote human-centered design with a specialization in XR and future technology.
Learn how she made a transition into a career she loves!
XR Designer Interview #2: Adriana Vecchioli
Adriana Vecchioli is a multidisciplinary designer and technologist in XR, living in Los Angeles. Before choosing an XR design career she worked in a business development career. But since she’s also an artist she was pulled into the XR career. Learn more about her story and find out how she successfully combined her artistic persona, business acumen and high tech!
XR Designer Interview #3: Eva Kuttichová
Eva is a Product and Interaction Designer focused on innovative applications — mainly AR/VR. She worked for companies such as Osmo, E-line Media, STRV, Toptal, and Vodafone and products from pixel zero for several startups. She has a YouTube channel, where she talks about product design, technology, and AR/VR.
She’s currently a rising star in the AR/VR community and is one to watch! Eva is also sharing her favorite tools and resources she uses on a regular basis for her design projects!
XR Designer Interview #4: Cornel Hillmann
Cornel Hillmann is a media designer and CG artist with over 20 years of experience in the media and entertainment, advertising and design industry. He has worked with brands including Panasonic, Jaguar, and The Singapore International Film Festival. Cornel has lectured masterclasses for immersive media post-production, advanced 3D-, VR- and media design-courses at Limkokwing University and is the author of the book “UX for XR” (Apress, 2019).
XR Designer Interview #5: Michael Barngrover
Michael Barngrover is a founder of Raptor Dance Studio in Turkey. After being disillusioned about the local support for immersive mediums, he took matters into his own hands and went from game design background into fully VR independent studio.
XR Designer Interview #6: Simon Frübis, from Head of Design to XR Designer
From 2014 until March 2021 Simon was head of design and co-founder of a digital marketing firm. He was responsible for everything related to UI /UX design and on- and offline marketing. Most of the time he was working on client jobs, created designs for websites and built customized WordPress templates. Why did he choose XR as his career move? Here's a snippet of what he had to say:
"My heart beats for interaction design and everything around innovation in UI/UX. I see enormous potential in the AR to create more natural and emotional user experiences between humans and computers, especially with hand interactions and haptics. Extended Realities allow us to break out of 2D screens and combine our real world with the infinite possibilities of the virtual world."
XR Designer Interview #7: Angelica Ortiz
Angelica Ortiz is a Sr. Creative Technologist at Media.Monk. She has worked on projects ranging from experiential, multi-sensory retail concepts to CES pitches and experience centers for Fortune 500 B2B and B2C clients including but not limited to P&G, Netflix, Nike, Google, Lenovo, Lexus, Red Bull, and Royal Carribean. Past projects include experiential, multi-sensory retail concepts, metaverse, generative AI, motion capture, immersive web, immersive dining, VR, AR, touch-reactive tables and more.
XR Designer Interview #8: Manuel Sainsily, 3D Artist and XR Design Manager at Unity Technologies
Manuel "Manu" Sainsily is a senior designer, researcher and teacher on the topics of User experience (UX), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and extended Reality (XR). Manu has always been extremely passionate about human-centered design to create products, services, and experiences that improve the lives of millions of people.
His passion, work, and determination brought him from Guadeloupe to Montreal where he spend his last 12 years as a design professional at companies like Immersion, IBM and PaySafe. He currently works as an UX/XR Design Manager Digital Twins at Unity Technologies. Beside visual design he also dabbles in haptics! As he says himself - "It's good time to be a Haptician!"
