Context
A speculative visionOS concept exploring spatial UI patterns for educational software. The subject explores native plant species examined at a microscopic scale, from epidermal cells, stomata, chloroplasts, to vascular bundles. The design challenge was making that invisible world feel present and examinable rather than illustrated.
The Design Question
How do you represent microscopic content spatially in a way that feels scientifically legible rather than decorative? Microscopy has its own visual language: slide mounts, objective lenses, focal depth. The question was how much of that language to carry into a spatial interface, and how to use visionOS’s depth capabilities to do something a textbook diagram or flat screen couldn’t. Making the specimen feel like something with actual scale and materiality required decisions about lighting, surface treatment, and how the 3D model sits in space relative to the viewer.
Key Decision
The magnification controls float in front of the viewport plane rather than sitting in a separate panel. This keeps the user’s gaze anchored to the specimen while adjusting, a pattern borrowed from surgical imaging interfaces.
What I’d Push Further
Sensory Interaction
The current design treats the specimen as something you observe. What I’d want to explore next is making it something you handle: touch a cell wall and feel a subtle resistance, tap a stomata and hear it open. Spatial computing invites that sensory layer and most visionOS concepts don’t go there yet.
Collaborative Use
I designed this for individual study, but the more interesting context might be a classroom: two students examining the same specimen in shared space, each able to annotate what they’re seeing. That’s a fundamentally different interaction model and one that plays directly to what the hardware does that a flat screen can’t.