Where design meets the spatial era
The moment it clicked
The first time spatial really made sense to me wasn’t technical.
It was emotional.
It was using some of Apple’s early Vision Pro experiences.
Encounter Dinosaurs and the Meditation app.
In Encounter Dinosaurs, the characters look directly at you.
Your actions influence what happens next.
The story unfolds around you, not in front of you.
In the Meditation experience, your surroundings dim.
The animation responds to your breathing.
It expands and surrounds you.
For the first time, it felt like I wasn’t using an app.
I could feel the design.
That was the moment it clicked.
This isn’t just 3D.
This isn’t UI in space.
This is something else.
What actually feels different
When something is truly spatial, you become aware of space in a different way.
Not as a backdrop, but as part of the experience.
In Campfire Space, this became very clear while building the immersive environment.
You are not just looking at a scene.
You are inside it.
The trees have scale.
They stretch 20 or 30 metres above you.
There is depth into the distance.
Mountains sit in the background.
The fire exists in front of you, not on a screen.
You feel where things are.
There is also a shift in tone.
Sometimes it is not about interaction at all.
It is about stillness.
About being in a space, with spatial audio, and letting the moment exist.
Other times, like in Encounter Dinosaurs, interaction changes the experience itself.
You can tell when something is truly spatial, because you stop thinking about the interface.
Where things go wrong today
A lot of current spatial apps still feel like adaptations.
Windows floating in space.
Interfaces translated directly from iPad or desktop.
They work, but they don’t feel spatial.
There is often too much UI.
Too much structure.
Too much reliance on familiar patterns.
And because of that, there is no real reason for them to exist in this medium.
Spatial is not about placing screens around a user.
It is about creating something that surrounds them.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is remove, not add.
Designing inside the experience
One thing that became clear very quickly while building Campfire Space is this:
You cannot fully design spatial from the outside.
I would build elements, then put the headset on.
Adjust scale. Adjust placement. Adjust distance.
See how it actually felt to be inside it.
Then repeat.
Again and again.
Spatial design has to be experienced to be designed properly.
What looks right on a flat screen often feels completely different when you are inside the space.
What makes something feel spatial
Not everything in 3D feels spatial.
A floating window in front of you is still a screen.
A truly spatial experience has a different quality.
It creates a sense of presence.
It uses the environment.
It responds to where you are, not just what you do.
It is the difference between looking at something
and feeling like you are inside it
Through building Campfire Space, and experiencing early Vision Pro apps, I keep coming back to the same idea:
Spatial moments happen when three things align
Presence / Space / Design
Presence
Presence is the feeling of being somewhere.
Not observing
Not controlling
But existing within
It is subtle, but powerful.
You notice it in moments like Encounter Dinosaurs, when a character looks directly at you and reacts to what you do.
Or in the Meditation experience, where your surroundings dim and the animation responds to your breathing.
In those moments, you are not thinking about interface.
You are just there.
Presence comes from how an experience surrounds you
how it responds to your movement
and how little it reminds you that you are looking at something artificial
It is also built through detail.
Small decisions that you might not consciously notice, but shape how real something feels.
The way light shifts.
The way sound behaves.
The way a space subtly responds to you.
Presence is rarely one big moment.
It is the accumulation of many small ones.
In Campfire Space, this meant focusing on feeling over function.
Letting the fire become something you sit with
not something you control
Presence is the goal.
Space
In spatial design, space is not empty.
It is a material.
Distance changes meaning
Scale changes importance
Placement changes connection
Where something exists matters as much as what it is.
This became very clear when building the immersive environment in Campfire.
The trees are not just background.
They have scale. You can look up and feel their height.
There is depth into the distance.
Mountains sit in the background and give the space a sense of place.
Even the fire itself is not fixed.
You can place it anywhere.
On a table, on the floor, scaled large or small depending on your environment.
That freedom is part of the design.
Spatial environments are not about perfectly recreating reality.
They are about shaping it.
Removing distractions.
Enhancing what matters.
Designing a version of reality that supports the feeling you want to create.
You are not arranging elements on a screen.
You are shaping how they exist around someone.
Design
Design is what brings intent to presence and space.
It is how you guide attention without forcing it
How you shape emotion without overwhelming it
How you create clarity without relying on flat UI
Design is what turns a collection of elements into a moment.
In spatial, this often means doing less.
Reducing UI
Removing clutter
Letting the environment and interaction carry the experience
In Campfire Space, the goal was not to build features.
It was to create a moment of calm.
The immersive environment surrounds you.
The audio anchors you in place.
The guided breathing mode dims the world around you.
The fire responds to your breath.
It becomes something you follow, not something you navigate.
In spatial, design is not just how something looks or works.
It is how it makes someone feel over time.
You are not designing an interface.
You are shaping an experience.
What comes next
We are still at the beginning of this.
Most experiences are still exploring what works.
But the opportunity is not in repeating old patterns.
It is in defining new ones.
Over the next few posts, I will break this down into:
10 Spatial Principles
A set of ideas for designing with presence, space, and feeling in mind.
Final thought
The goal is simple.
Create something that feels real enough that you forget it was designed at all.
