2023
FamilyMR System Design
An integrated workflow for creating shared mixed reality spaces
{systems mapping, user flows, wireframing, interface design}
Overview
Extending bonding across distances into a system
This project is a system-design extension of Bonding Across Distances, my master’s thesis on using mixed reality to support social presence between transnational family members.
While the main case study documents the research and four iterative MR prototypes, this page focuses on FamilyMR: a proposed system that simplifies how family members capture personal assets, organize shared collections, and build a virtual family space together.
Current Workflow
An experience spread across eight applications
Producing the thesis prototypes required eight applications and tools across mobile, desktop, and headset devices. Assets were captured in separate apps, edited and optimized in specialist software, and then transferred into an MR host platform.
This fragmented process created a major accessibility barrier. Family members without experience in 3D modelling or game engines would have difficulty contributing independently, limiting equal participation and shared ownership of the virtual family space.
System Design
Bringing asset creation and world-building together
I translated the existing workflow into an all-in-one FamilyMR system. Instead of moving assets through several disconnected tools, family members could capture, edit, organize, and share personal media through one connected experience.
The proposed system combines a mobile app with a web and MR platform. Shared asset collections synchronize across the system, allowing family members to contribute to the same virtual space from different devices.
Experience
Supporting different ways to contribute
The mobile experience supports capturing 3D objects and 360° environments, organizing personal assets, and managing the family group. The web and MR experience supports customizing the shared virtual space and managing its collective asset library.
This connected structure allows family members to participate through the devices and activities most familiar to them rather than requiring everyone to follow the same technical production process.
Interface
Translating the system into mobile and web flows
Early sketches explored how asset capture, family groups, shared collections, and virtual spaces could fit within one system. I then developed mobile and web wireframes showing the main paths from creating an asset to using it in the shared family space.
These interfaces visualize the proposed system rather than document a launched product. They communicate how the research findings could be developed into a more accessible FamilyMR experience.
