< Back to UX/UI portfolio.

Gamified Stereoscopic 3D Experience Design

Project Overview

The Middle Space Project is an immersive, joystick-controlled digital gallery experience built for naked-eye stereoscopic 3D displays. Visitors board the SpaceTrain and explore MiddleSpace—a procedurally generated galaxy filled with 3D art, fantasy environments, and interactive Points of Interest spread across 46 sectors.

The experience uses large, parallax-shifting LED monitors

to create a holographic depth effect without VR headsets. MiddleSpace spans 1,000 light-years, with evolving weather systems, creatures, worlds, and artist-built installations. Once the virtual SpaceTrain is aligned to its physical counterpart, each window becomes a portal where the real and digital worlds meet.

Research Scope

For MiddleSpace, I used three kinds of research to make sure the experience worked from every angle. I started with system simulations and modeling to build the rules of the galaxy and test how everything behaved. Then I met with experts at the Entertainment Technology Center to get early feedback on clarity, difficulty, and feasibility. Lastly, I ran user testing with everyday participants to see what felt intuitive and what needed adjustment. Using these methods together helped shape an experience that is imaginative, functional, and easy for anyone to enjoy.

World Building MiddleSpace V1

MiddleSpace’s core gameplay is built from real constraints—time, distance, and rate of travel—which become the primary mechanics of the experience. I realized while modeling V1, I was making fabricating too many details that are interconnected, creating contradictions and inconsistencies that would not sustainable. If I make up the distance across the galaxy, and I make up the time to traverse it, I cannot make up the rate. The rate of travel is one of the most important constraints that will impact the overall experience. I knew I wanted a smooth ride with a cruise feel.

World Building MiddleSpace V2

I realized, I need to start with the speed of travel and build the world around that. First, I conducted simulations of the design by driving at different speeds to gauge the feel. Then I used "real-world" metrics like MPH to design travel rates mathematically, recalibrating the scale of the system to ensure realism and meaningful stakes. Navigation itself becomes the “game.” Players must make trade-offs: choosing which sectors to visit, which Points of Interest to skip, and how to plan efficient routes through a world that’s simply too large to see all at once, but able to be experiences fully over time. Possibilities mixed with scarcity creates opportunity cost, pacing, variation, and reward.

Navigation Interface V1

I conducted early user testing with experts at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) to evaluate feasibility, comfort, and interaction flow. Their feedback showed that difficulty and controls must scale to the physical environment—favoring simple, lightweight mechanics such as travel constraints, gentle motion paths, and randomized weather systems. These insights helped calibrate the experience so it feels intuitive and accessible inside a real-world installation.

Hybrid Navigation Controls and Interface V2

After the ETC experts evaluated Interface V1, I rebuilt the navigation model as Interface V2 and put it in front of pilot users who represented the actual guest experience. This round focused on discoverability and comfort—could people understand where they were in the galaxy, read the maps, and use a single joystick without needing instructions? I watched how quickly they picked up the controls, where they hesitated, and when they felt overloaded. Their reactions drove changes to label clarity, map density, button groupings so the system felt playful instead of stressful.

MiddleSpace Design System V3

V3 is the synthesis of the ETC expert feedback and the V2 user test. The galaxy maps, sector views, and system-level screens now share one clear visual language, so players always know their current location, selected route, and time-to-destination. Travel distance and time are surfaced as simple trade-offs, and the joystick behavior is tuned so small physical movements translate into smooth, predictable motion on screen. Phenomena, POIs, and artifacts are layered in without cluttering the main navigation, giving guests reasons to explore while keeping orientation stable. The result is a cohesive navigation system that feels intuitive in a dark, social, real-world venue and still supports deep, replayable exploration of MiddleSpace.