Global Reach and Impact

Designing immersive global learning experiences for future-facing skills

Project Summary

Client: MIT

Completed: December 2021

Sector: Higher Education, Corporate, Continuing Education

As an instructional designer for the MIT xPRO Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality professional course, I supported the development of an immersive, high-impact program aimed at global professionals exploring emerging tech.

My Roles and Responsibilities

  1. Course Mapping and Design. Collaborated closely with five MIT experts and three industry leaders to design learner-centered experiences that emphasized experiential learning, practical application, and professional skill development.
  2. Assessment & Evaluation. Structured assessments into basic and advanced pathways to support diverse learner needs. Designed applied practice activities such as Try-It: Paper Prototyping for Learning Pathways, and guided teams in translating those into immersive 360° VR experiences.
  3. VR/AR Prototyping & Development. Explored and applied design and development tools across disciplines, including game engines (Unity, Reach), photogrammetry (Qlone), 3D modeling, animation, interaction design, and sound design. Contributed to course-level prototyping using CoSpaces/now Delightex and 360° media assets.
  4. Collaboration & Project Management. Led collaboration across interdisciplinary teams in the U.S. and India, including SMEs, visual designers, media producers, tech leads, Quality Matters reviewers, and junior instructional designers. Aligned timelines and creative production with learning strategy and course goals.
Words of praise and recognition for Yin's design excellence on the VR/AR course by Luke Hobson, MIT.

Public feedback from Luke Hobson, Ed.D.—then Senior Instructional Designer and now Assistant Director at MIT xPRO—shared during the course launch on LinkedIn. Click on image to expand.

Inside the Design Process

To support the XR course development process, I created custom visuals and interactive assets that aligned with SME intent, instructional goals, and copyright constraints. The following examples highlight design prototypes and visual experiments I contributed to during early content development.

Facial Animation Prototyping with Kalidoface 3D

These short prototypes were created using Kalidoface 3D to explore face and body tracking in XR instructional sequences. Click to expand the video full screen and see how the webcam captures all the gestures.

Coaching Junior Designers and Outsourced Media Teams

To support junior designers and outsourced media production teams across time zones, I developed explicit visual and written instructions to guide high-quality media production. These prototypes helped clarify timing, animation logic, and visual storytelling intent.

Specific notes for junior motion designers

Visual notes used to coach junior designers on syncing animation with script and narration cues. Click on image to expand. 

Video prototype to guide animation pacing and visual storytelling.

Instructional Infographic

Producing VR and AR Experiences Part 1: Design Overview

This infographic was created to help learners compare values-driven and productivity-driven approaches in XR design. It was used in early modules to visually anchor key concepts. Click on image to expand. (Designed in Illustrator)

What I Learned

Designing learning experiences across continents and time zones taught me to lead with clarity, creativity, and flexibility. From working with emerging XR tools to guiding junior designers through prototype-based feedback, this project challenged me to align vision with reality, while honoring constraints like copyright, client confidentiality, and a distributed production pipeline.

Creating an XR course requires fluency across multiple disciplines: game engines, workflow management, 3D modeling, animation, interaction design, sound design, and more. I had to learn new software tools in real time while building the course, all while coordinating input from multiple SMEs due to the breadth of the content. Despite its complexity, this remains one of the most memorable and creatively rewarding courses I’ve designed in my career.

⚠️ Note: Assets shown here reflect early-stage development and instructional support materials. Final course content is subject to NDA and not available for public display.

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