What Digital Leaders Need to Know to Prepare for the Future of Spatial Experiences

Get started now with this guide

by Derek Fridman, Design Partner

The Apple Vision Pro will truly redefine immersive digital experiences – even more so when brands leverage the technology to its full potential.

At launch, less than 1% of apps were natively designed for Vision Pro, putting Work & Co in an exclusive class of companies to ship a day-one brand experience for this platform. In designing the PGA Tour Vision app, we saw how Apple’s spatial environment uniquely brings together the physical and digital worlds to open up a new dimension of engagement. The companies that learn how to harness its power now will have a distinct advantage among brands battling for attention in the experience economy.

In this guide, we share our learnings from successfully bringing a native Apple Vision Pro experience to market— 

which has landed on “top 10 app” lists and was featured in Harvard Business Review.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• New opportunities spatial computing presents for businesses
• Which industries have the most initial potential for spatial experiences
• The Work & Co framework for creating a great spatial experience
• Design considerations for spatial
• Practical tips for getting your team up and running

Not just another headset

The Apple Vision Pro isn't the first headset we have seen, but it is the first of its kind. The Vision Pro is positioned in a new category of innovation, purposefully avoiding mentions of virtual, augmented, mixed, or extended reality as it aims higher than XR to create an entirely new category of technology that changes how people communicate, access entertainment, work, and shop.

Apple is defining a new benchmark for digital experiences in the same way the iPhone changed mobile phones as we know them. Bloomberg suggests that the Vision Pro may not achieve rapid initial adoption like the Apple Watch or iPad, but signs of upcoming language support and global market expansion indicate that spatial computing will make a significant impact worldwide.

As this technology gains momentum, digital leaders must consider how experiences will evolve beyond two-dimensional surfaces. Copying and pasting an experience designed for web or mobile into visionOS is a missed opportunity. There needs to be a compelling reason for users to engage with your brand and experience on this new platform. When this is done well, brands will stand out from competitors, build deeper engagement with their customers, and open new channels to new audiences.

The following framework offers tips to help you get there.

Work & Co's four-part framework for designing a great spatial experience

For brands across industries (more on this below) there are abundant opportunities — if you are an early adopter. Consider this framework to pinpoint where spatial computing can uniquely and meaningfully improve your customer experience. You can use the ideation prompts to generate possible directions that are best suited to your business and customers.

1. Create a new category: A great spatial computing experience is about allowing your users to do something in a new way, not possible with other technologies, or on other devices.

Q: How might we provide new, immersive ways to interact with our existing digital products and experiences?

Q: How could spatial provide completely new experiences for our customers?

2. Expand beyond physical limits: Spatial computing breaks down barriers, allowing you to bring users closer to your product or location.

Q: If you could engage your clients from anywhere, how could this exponentially expand relationships with your brand or product?

Q: What do our customers wish they could do today, but can’t? How could spatial computing bridge this divide?

3. Bring people in: Spatial computing represents an opportunity to take advantage of the extra space presented in a spatial environment to bring people together digitally.

Q: How could your brand leverage spatial computing for collaboration?

Q: How might we build communities around our brand and products, enabling our users to connect with each other in authentic and unprecedented ways?

4. Foster deeper emotional connections: Spatial computing involves multiple senses, and as brand leaders know, sensory information drives emotional reactions.

Q: Where in your customer experience could spatial computing evoke a more profound emotional response?

Q: In what ways can we tie the visceral feeling our customers get from our brand’s physical experience more closely to their digital experience?

As you work through this framework, it’s important that the right stakeholders—across design, engineering, and business operations— are part of the discussion. Leverage these questions to spark dialogue and create alignment.

A fully immersive canvas: design considerations

Spatial computing brings a host of new design considerations that can only be understood if you’ve invested time understanding this new device. To be clear, this is not VR/XR — it’s the idea that we can compute not just on a laptop or tablet, but on a device that we wear and can interact with through natural movements of our eyes and hands.

Keep these areas top of mind as part of your design concepting and prototyping:

Spatial awareness: Understand what it means to present type, buttons, and images in a context where you can move them around and closer and farther from your view.

The UI is more sensitive than you think: The Apple Vision Pro is a quiet device, unlike immersive headsets of the past. Big gestures are not needed. You can navigate with subtle glances and taps.

Adjacency: Consider your brand’s look and feel in the device and what it will look like next to different products, which can all be in a user’s field of view.

Time: Think about how much time people should spend in the device and in your app optimally; for some, it might only be a few minutes at a time, and for others, it could be an hour.

Part of an ecosystem: The experience designed for Vision Pro won’t necessarily be standalone, it will connect to other Apple products in the future.

Getting your spatial experience off the ground and in the market

When we designed the award-winning PGA TOUR Vision app, our singular focus was to ensure we meaningfully brought fans closer to the action.

Golf fans can navigate through 2D windows, highly-detailed 3D hole models of PGA TOUR courses, and detailed hole views to track shot trails in real-time, enjoy a bird's-eye view, and gain insights and perspectives never seen before.

The integration of a real-time leaderboard and detailed scoring for each PGA TOUR event enhances this vivid, immersive experience. Key information, including shot distance, apex, and speed, is always available for overlay within the experience to provide context to each shot trail.

Bringing this spatial experience to life required a mastery of data visualization, a deep understanding of golf fans, and a desire to seize the full potential of this medium to delight and inspire users. Key to its success—the PGA TOUR Vision app was designed with a holistic view of the TOUR’s existing digital product ecosystem and a keen eye for new features the app would enable.

How spatial computing will transform industries

Apple recently highlighted some early enterprise experiences, giving business leaders a glimpse into the rich and varied applications for spatial computing. While Work & Co’s first spatial computing app focused on sports, there are several industries where we can envision spatial computing making an impact-

Healthcare- Enhanced 3D imaging stands out as an obvious application, alongside opportunities to improve diagnoses and patient care and aid in complex decision-making between healthcare professionals.

E-commerce- Virtual stores, showrooms, interactive product demos, try-ons, and in situ product previews are a few ways shopping is about to become infinitely more immersive.

Sports, gaming, and entertainment- Spatial computing can transport users into the heart of the action, from the major leagues to massive multiplayer games and prestigious venues.

Real estate, construction, and architecture- Builders can use spatial computing to visualize the volumes and layouts of their new builds, long before ground is broken. Similarly, architects can realistically model how a structure will integrate with and complement the surrounding environment.

Training and skills development- Highly technical disciplines, like engineering and skilled maintenance, can benefit from integrated data, modeling, and communications within a spatial computing environment.

Workforce productivity- Spatial computing can provide an infinite canvas to arrange the information and systems employees need to work effectively and collaborate.

We're in a fascinating time that feels like an inflection point. It's still an age of ideas and firsts and the perfect time for industry leaders to lean into our curiosity and experiment.

Embrace early and reap real results

Humans have always been eager to transport themselves elsewhere— the potential to seamlessly do so now is massive. Our recommendation for every design and technology team is to get started now.

1. Get the hardware and experiment.
2. Set up time for each of your teams to play.
3. Look for an internal or external opportunity to fix.
4. Look for quick wins, quick prototypes, and MVPs.

As the hardware around spatial computing becomes smaller, lighter, and at a more accessible price-point, use cases will grow. But as a leader in the digital space, it's essential to position yourself ahead of this wave or risk getting left behind.

Interested in exploring how Work & Co can bring your spatial computing experience to market? Connect with us at newbiz@work.co.