World Expo
Xplorer
An immersive social learning experience that connects
digital and physical worlds.
Overview: The World Expo began in the 1800s as an opportunity for the nominated country to host the world and showcase the world’s advancements and innovations. In 2020 Dubai was invited to host the fair for the world, and Magnopus was hired to shape the technological vision and bring it to reality.
Design Problem: The government of Dubai was concerned that only a few people in the world can attend Expo and hoped to make it more accessible - especially since sustainability and opportunity were two of their core pillars.
Solution: Recognizing this, Magnopus got into action to demonstrate how a ‘connected space’ could make Expo accessible to all.
Expo Xplorer, launched in 2021, is an immersive gaming and AR experience that seamlessly blends physical reality with a digital twin world - spanning 4.38km² - the size of 11 football fields! Explorers, traverse the digital twin of the World Expo Dubai as a digital avatar, from anywhere in the world, while people in Dubai explored the physical world, and they could connect with one another to learn about sustainability, opportunity and mobility - and donate to charities.
Organization: Magnopus (Client: HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, VP and PM of UAE and Ruler of Dubai)
Role: Lead Product Designer. My task was to transform the client's vision into a viable and feasible reality, translating the goals cross-functionally with other team leads and focusing on the UX/UI and Content Direction.
Team: Director, Product Designer, Product Manager, Software Developers, Back-end Technical Director, Technical Director, Art Director, Narrative & Content Designer, Technical Designer, UI Developer,
Timeline: 2020-2021 (1 year)
4.38km² - the size of 11 football fields!
Explorers traverse the digital twin of the World Expo Dubai as a digital avatar, from anywhere
in the world; people in Dubai explored the physical world, and they could connect.
The Challenge
When I joined the project, a year before launch, I was met with several design challenges.
The core issues:
Visual inconsistencies
Unstructured design work
Unclear design priorities
Lack of documentation and specs
Silo between design and dev
Goals
Set North star
Reorganize Design Process
Experience Principles
Establish Crossfunctional relation
Reframe product strategy
Systematize VXD and IXD
Product Process
Design Process
Design Research
I arrived in a whirlwind of ideas and features but no clear path to decide their relevance. Harnessing my past experience in design and product thinking, I facilitated synthesis exercises, experience maps, and wireframes, bringing a cross-functional team around a shared vision. To infuse fun, we ran a game jam, incorporating playful elements into the app.
Expo Archetypes for Guests. In order to socialize the archetypes, we simplified them and focused on primary targeted users. We dove into a sea of user data, gathering insights from interviews and usability tests. The goal was to understand our diverse user base and enhance their experience.
Low-resolution storyboards were effective as a tool to align cross-functionally between the content and UX/UI teams. Once there was an alignment, we developed the scene with real-time artists, and built it out in mid to high resolution.
I crafted detailed Experience Maps to understand the overall journey and narrow in on areas to improve. made tough trade-offs, and tackled engineering constraints to paint a comprehensive picture of our users' needs and wants.
Product Strategy
In order to achieve a holistic plan, I led an effort to develop concrete design principles, various upskilling workshops such as a 3 day Human Centered Design workshop across functions and countries.
Developing the design system in Figma allowed the team to align cross-functionally, and created efficiencies between Unity and Figma.
Interaction Design
User flows, information architecture, navigation, chat, feedback in audio, motion and dialogs are examples of interaction design that I worked on across the product.
Visual Design
I led a visual strategy followed by a design system that I worked on with a UX/UI designer. The goal was to create a design system that was multi-platform, and multi-language. It included color, typography, iconography, and components. The design system was implemented in both 2D and 3D, as it needed to work across iOS, Android and Unity.
Outcomes
City Branding: marketing the city for future city projects through100 million virtual visits from 192 countries
Largest metaverse experience in the world, covering 4.38km² - positioning Dubai as a tech global hub, and winning the Time’s Best Innovation Award for 2022.
A strong use case of the Connected Spaces Platform, and accessibility solutions for Sustainability goals, features that were reused as cutting edge product design solutions.
