Role: UX Designer
Type of Project: Solo Project
Duration: 60 hours
Software: Unity, Figma
UX Redesign: Moodle
Overview
I was playing Left 4 Dead 2 for years by the time I was assigned this project in one of my classes. This project was focused on creating a compelling main menu. I thought to myself, what if the wall writing in Left 4 Dead 2 was a menu? With that thought, I was inspired to start concepting and planning. I decided to create a main menu to explore building an interactive, dietetic menu for VR. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a headset at the time, so I had to use my mouse and keyboard.
(Image credit: Valve)
(Image credit: Valve)
The main menu I created would embody the emptiness of the apocalypse but highlight the remnants of the survivors that came before.
Thoughts to Wireframe
To get myself started with this project I went to Figma and developed a mockup to encapsulate the vision of the immersive main menu that lived in my head. To help understand how players might approach the menu and how I can guide them through it.
Thoughts to Wireframe
I utilized the rule of thirds while planning out the golden path through the menu. The goal was to make the main menu prominent but also supported by the environment. Hence the progression from title to buttons to props as seen from the gold line.
I made sure to align the menu so users would naturally read from left to right. Making the progression of interactive elements to visually pleasing in order of importance to the user.
Building a UI for VR
I wanted to create a space and a menu when making the main menu. I created an interesting space around the Menus to give players things to look at and interact with. From my experience playing many high-quality VR games, I knew I needed to place objects around the prototype space to represent the interactable objects that would be in the VR version if it were ever created. With that in mind, I created a unique space around the Main Menu, Options Menu, and Credits to lean into the interaction VR players are looking for.
Main Menu
Added a variety of graffiti to the Main Menu space to make it feel like a lived-in world before the apocalypse.
Let players use a flashlight in hand to uncover bits of environmental storytelling scattered throughout the area. Encourage players to interact in the environment with the flashlight in VR.
Put in red eyes semi-hidden in the background to tie to the graffiti of a monster drawn on the main menu wall to give context to the world.
An element for players to discover in VR and build the eerie atmosphere of the game this would have been made for.
Options Menu
Designed the Options Menu as a diegetic UI that players can interact with directly in the world.
Hooked the music volume slider to a radio, so adjusting it changes the audio.
In VR, players could even grab the radio and chuck it across the room if they felt like it.
Wanted to make sure the space was fun to mess around in before the player started the game.
Also used the menu space to help set the tone and atmosphere right from the jump.
Ending Notes
This project gave me hands-on experience designing for VR, from building a diegetic menu integrated into the environment to solving technical challenges like camera-following map functionality and making Unity's canvas UI respond to environmental lighting. Using scene composition and intentional menu design, I crafted an immersive space that felt native to VR, rather than relying on traditional UI conventions.
The biggest constraint was not having access to a VR headset; testing through a monitor only goes so far, and there's a meaningful difference between clicking through a menu with a mouse and physically moving through and interacting with it in VR. To compensate, I leaned into animations to better visualize how interactions would feel in motion, though this came at the cost of some fine-tuning time. If given the opportunity, I'd port this into VR and continue refining it through real headset testing.
Check out my other project!