Supernatural
A VR fitness app launched on the Oculus Quest. That app that was the center of the FTC filing against Meta
MY ROLE: lead the UX design, contributed to UI, and sole designer on design systems for all verticals throughout the full product lifecycle
OFFICIAL LINKS: Website, Oculus Store, App Store, Google Play Store
Select Press: Wired, The Verge, Forbes, Road to VR, LA Times
Supernatural Ecosystem
The core parts of the Supernatural system are the VR app (Oculus) and the mobile app (iOS and Android)
RESEARCH
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a fitness person. While there was some work done by the wider company on market research, I wanted to dig deeper into user motivations, user behaviors, and fitness competitors because it was definitely not in my wheelhouse so I did my own research.
I dug through forums, Reddit threads, YouTube videos, app downloads, research papers, and more to try pinpoint key areas that were repeated by folks interested in technology-assisted fitness. There were a couple of things that kept coming up:
- People enjoyed working out virtually because it enabled them to do it at their own pace and in their own time--much easier to fit into their day
- There was lots of shame involved in fitness so virtually working out meant they didn't have to face that shame in public
- Goal setting was important but the type of goals differed pretty drastically (improving overall health, improving quality of life, losing weight, to feel better emotionally, to be consistent, etc.)
- Women and folks on the older end of the userbase for VR often have problems quickly picking up mechanics and often need to be heavily guided through their first experience, but can also tend to be the most vocal supporters once they pick it up
User Flows and UI
I led the UI and UX of the product from beginning until launch, then supported new features for the remainder at my time there.
Key highlights include:
- A stressful technical and UX challenge for getting heart rate data that became significantly less challenging when the engineer and I realized that we didn't need real time data--we could then pass the information to the server and deal with the slight delay since that data was obscured in-game while working out anyway! That simplified the UX flow significantly since we no longer had to connect the heart rate monitor directly to the headset.
- Reducing scope of everything to figure out what the true MVP of the product was while still maintaining user motivation and encouraging retention. That meant helping figure out what could be a fast follow and what absolutely needed to be in the product on day 1.
- Figuring out the whole UI design system... then being the one in charge of documenting all of it đ
Supernatural Editor
I also did tools work, helping out with both UI and UX design on the Supernatual Mapping Tool that enabled our level designers to map targets to moments in songs. This encompassed everything from proposing small UX fixes to make things easier to understand for users, to designing new features, to revamping the entire UI aesthetic, through to complete UX overhaul proposals. Admittedly everything was fairly low priority on my end since I was still covering design on the live app, so things tended to be a bit rushed, but working on the editor was a bit of a treat!
Equitable Design
I worked with the design team collectively to ideate and test all aspects of the app, including the actual fitness experience. During this process, I often advocated for user needs, especially as it related to things like avatar design proposals (no masculine robots please!), game mechanic implications on specific user groups (a high focus on calories can be triggering for folks with eating disorders--a group that has a lot of crossover with fitness), and information gathering (trans people answering a question about gender that impacts scoring may lead to frustration and inaccurate reporting).
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