About

Let us extend the reality together!

I am Siyu Chen (pronounced: SEE YOU. Yes, I see you while you are reading this), a senior architectural designer (7+ years) and aspiring XR designer (2+ years) based in the San Francisco Bay Area. My design mission across all mediums is to cultivate meaningful interactions between one another. My expertise in designing inspiring physical spaces translates well to creating engaging virtual spaces. I believe that cultivating an extensive understanding of both virtual reality and our physical world will help inform how XR can unlock the full potential in augmenting our daily lives.

Having self-taught the XR design fundamentals and how to utilize important tools such as Unity with XRI, I then adapted my design process of creating sophisticated spaces into a process for solving complex problems of interacting with XR technologies and products. I developed a complete workflow to discover, storyboard, prototype, and test a product. I learn by getting my hands dirty with rapid prototyping and working towards making each iteration more intuitive and polished, as close to real-life interactions as possible. My current focus is to experiment with use cases that deeply connect people by fostering natural interactions with a pinch of "superpower" - like the ability to enhance your memories - overlaid in the immersive spaces.

Skills

UX Design principles for XR

I have been fine-tuning my UX design process and principles to explore and harness the fast evolving XR technologies. The growing list of categories are:

Immersion & Affordance - directing attention, workflow, storytelling;
Spatial UI - diegetic UI and 2D canvas UI;
Input Methods - controller interaction and tooltips;
Navigation - teleportation, continuous move and motion sickness;
Collaborative - co-presence, social interaction and comfort, privacy.

Ideate & Storyboard

I use a combination of tools to rapidly ideate and iterate in both 2D and 3D/VR design spaces.

Concepts app - sketching and brainstorming;
Figma, Adobe XD - rapidly iterating 2D storyboards and mockups;
ShapesXR - collaborating and prototyping directly in VR with simple interactions. A sweet spot for speed and real-time 3D interaction.

Prototype with Unity

I use Unity as the main platform to further develop the storyboard created in ShapesXR, by implementing the powerful and versatile components and toolkits below:

Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit - implementing and polishing numerous types of interactions;
Lighting design and optimization;

MRTK3 - harnessing the advanced UX building blocks;

XR Designer with Unity

The earner has acquired the knowledge and necessary skills to apply the best practices to design and prototype intuitive, usable, and human-centered for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences in apps, games, and other applications using Unity.

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Scripting

I use C# language to refine interactions for better presence by leveraging the tools below:

Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit - customizing default interactables and interactors to create intuitive interactions;
DoTween animation engine - writing simple and reusable scripts to create animations for better affordance;

C# Scripting Fundamentals in Unity

The earner has acquired the ability to develop logically structured scripts through the use of the C# language. They have learned to model real-world problems using object-oriented concepts and write classes that are expandable and reusable.

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3D Space Design

As an architectural designer, I am proficient in multiple 3D modeling tools, and efficient at expanding my toolset with new ones:

Blender & Maya - hard surface modeling and basic organic modeling;
Autodesk Revit - advanced level at full scope architectural design and BIM (Building Information Modeling);
Rhino 3D with Grasshopper - advanced level at hard surface modeling, NURB geometry modeling, and parametric computational modeling;
SketchUp - rapid 3D modeling;

Visual communication

Visual communication is the foundation of my day-to-day work. Translating between 2D graphics and spatial experiences, I am adept at distilling information to a clear message, be it a graphic diagram or a video presentation. I strongly believe that active communication and taking initiatives is key to smooth teamwork. Tools I use every day:

Premiere Pro - video editing and presentation;
After Effect - quick mockup and communication of XR concept;
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign - 2D visual communication.