[ SPATIAL UX · DESIGN · XR ]
Designing the spatial web
When your canvas becomes the room around the user, the rules of 2D design break. Learn the ergonomics, comfort, and interaction principles of spatial UX.
Watch the lecture, then read Max's deep-dive below.
- How designing for XR differs from flat 2D screens
- Working with depth, scale, and the physical space around the user
- Interaction beyond click/tap — gaze, gesture, and direct touch
- Comfort, safety, and accessibility in immersive UX
- Patterns borrowed from 2D computing — and where they break
Designing for the spatial web — VR, AR, and mixed reality — is not "2D design, but floating." When your interface surrounds the user in three dimensions, the whole discipline shifts: you are designing an environment and a body's relationship to it, not a flat page viewed at arm's length. The screen designer's instincts about size, distance, and layout have to be re-earned.
The comfort zone is real, and small
Human necks and eyes have limits. Content placed too high forces uncomfortable craning; too low, and users hunch. The practical guidance from years of platform research is to keep primary content within a comfortable cone roughly centered on the horizon — a gentle downward gaze is natural, extreme up-tilt is not. Give the user's neck a rest. Anything they must look at often belongs near their resting line of sight.
Distance changes everything
- Too close is nauseating. Content nearer than about half a metre strains the eyes' convergence and can trigger discomfort. Keep readable UI at least ~0.5 m away, and often 1–2 m for panels.
- Size scales with distance. Because things farther away subtend a smaller angle, you size text and targets by angular size (degrees of the visual field), not pixels. A button that works at 1 m must grow if you move it to 3 m.
- Depth is a design tool. Use near/far layering to establish hierarchy the way 2D uses size and contrast — but sparingly, because large depth jumps make the eyes refocus and tire.
Interaction: hands, gaze, and rays
Input in space is richer and less precise than a mouse. The dominant patterns are ray-casting (point a controller or finger and a laser selects at a distance), direct touch (reach out and press a button that is within arm's reach), and gaze plus commit (look at a target, then pinch or click to select). Match the pattern to the distance: direct touch for near panels, rays for far ones. And make targets generous — spatial pointing jitters, so hit areas should be larger and more forgiving than on a screen.
Anchor the user, and let them opt in
Two final principles carry a lot of weight. First, diegetic and world-anchored UI — controls that live on objects or surfaces in the scene — feels more natural than a flat HUD welded to the face, which can feel claustrophobic. Second, respect that immersion is intense: provide clear exits, seated modes, and comfort options, and let people enter deeper immersion by choice rather than forcing it. The best spatial design makes the technology disappear and leaves only the place.