Project Overview

Project:

Master Thesis project (Graded 19/20)

Lifeform function:

UX/UI

3D design and modelling (Using Blender)

User testing (Using ShapesXR)

Implementation (Using Unity)

Area of Study:

Interaction Design, XR Design, 3D

Platform:

Meta Quest 2 (Standalone VR)

Targeted Goal:

A VR tool that empowers dancers to use movement as the primary mode of interaction — exploring, composing, and inspiring choreography through a responsive virtual environment.

Introduction

Nabia emerged from a simple but powerful question: can Virtual Reality become an artistic space where movement is the language?

As VR has grown more accessible — driven by consumer headsets like the Meta Quest 2 — most development still centres on gaming. Nabia explores what happens when you bring dance into that space instead, creating a virtual environment that reacts to the dancer's body in real time.

The design process followed three phases — Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation — rooted in the IDEO human-centred framework and informed by Game Design principles like the MDA Framework (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics).

Inspiration

The Inspiration phase was about understanding the landscape before designing anything — studying how existing VR solutions handle interaction and going directly to dancers to understand their real needs and pain points.

Theoretical Framework

The project drew on VR design literature to ground interaction decisions in human cognition and perception. Key principles: visual modalities dominate VR interfaces, diegetic UI deepens immersion, and the user's emotional state is central to experience quality. The MDA Framework proved especially relevant — connecting the designer's mechanics to the user's emotional and aesthetic response.

Competitive Analysis

Three VR experiences were analysed, each contributing something distinct to Nabia's direction.

Beat Saber showed how asymmetric interactions can guide users into choreographic movement.

Liminal demonstrated how indirect environmental cues — sound, colour, head position — lead users into physical and emotional states without explicit instruction.

OpenBrush proved the value of unrestricted movement registration and was used as the practical tool in the Movement Workshop.

Movement Workshop

A hands-on workshop with dancers at the School of Dance (ESD) used OpenBrush as a proxy for the proposed tool, running four exercises across solo exploration, projected movement, and real-time duet dynamics.

Key findings: dancers felt expanded movement freedom with no motion sickness; accumulating movement trails quickly became overwhelming; time-bounded registration was felt as essential. Most unexpectedly, participants described the experience as "a duet with the virtual space" — the environment felt like an entity responding to them. Hardware limitations (controllers, headset weight) were consistent pain points but seen as challenges to design around.

Ideation

With research and user insights established, the Ideation phase shifted to translating findings into concrete interaction concepts and building up to a fully functional grey-box prototype.

Personas

Interaction Breadboard

All interactions were built around the three tracking points available on the Meta Quest 2: left hand, right hand, and head. Four groups were defined, each targeting different movement qualities from Laban Movement Analysis.

Greybox Prototype

With the interactions defined in ShapesXR, development moved into Unity across four iterative prototype builds, each adding complexity on top of the last.

Implementation

With interactions validated, the Implementation phase focused on bringing the experience to life visually and putting it in front of real users through the Minimum Viable Product.

Visual Moodboard

Being the project focused on exploration of movement, using instinct and natural responses, the most adequate visual approach to it was to search inspiration that lead to natural, low poly geometry.

The goal as to give the environment a sense of infinity that invites exploration without prescribing emotion.

Three references were selected: No Man's Sky (nature meets technology, mid-polygon), Legend of Zelda: BOTW (low-poly NPR, platform-constrained) and Liminal (simple shapes, water, low-polygon stability).

Additionally, a 3D animation was developed through blender as an inspiration for the MVP development.

Minimum Viable Product

Built in Unity using a Blender-to-Unity pipeline, the MVP brought all four interaction groups into a single open seascape — floating spheres, orbital objects, a black hole element, and real-time particle trails.

A calm NPR ocean replaced the ground, with objects turning purple when submerged. A small platform defined the user's safe movement space.

The MVP was tested with four first-year Dance students in three sessions run in pairs and these were the conclusions.

Environment Exploration — users reported immediate calm rather than overwhelm. Dancers instinctively divided their body into three zones to test each interaction, but the environment's character guided movement toward circular patterns — inspiring exploration while also narrowing it.

Directed Focus — one user in VR, one improvising in response. Hardware remained the main pain point, but the pair dynamic validated the concept of a choreographic recording and sharing pipeline.

Virtual Inspiration — unguided exploration. Users felt most free here, describing a reflexivity loop where movement shaped the environment, the environment inspired new movement, and the boundary between intention and reaction dissolved.

Final Result - Nabia

Nabia demonstrated that VR can function as a legitimate artistic and choreographic space. Movement as an interaction language proved both feasible and expressive — with Laban Movement principles serving as a shared vocabulary between the dancer's body and the virtual environment.

The most significant finding was a shift in what the tool could become: from a movement exploration experiment into a case for a platform — where dancers build, share, and respond to each other's virtual movement environments.

Link for the Thesis