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NASA First Woman — XR Educational Platform

Real-time XR educational platform for STEM and space exploration.

System


Real-time XR educational platform combining a graphic novel, AR-enabled mobile application, website, and interactive educational content.


The project expands NASA’s Artemis program narrative through immersive storytelling, enabling users to explore space exploration concepts via augmented reality and interactive experiences.

Scope


  • Real-time XR mobile application

  • Single-screen experience per device

  • Mobile performance constraints

  • Educational and public-facing context

  • Multiple media formats: app, website, graphic novels, video content

  • Long-term initiative with multiple releases and iterations

  • Strong scientific and narrative consistency requirements

My Role


Art Director / UI–UX / Technical Artist / Web & Print Designer


  • Screen-space and world-space UI design

  • UI shaders and partial environment rendering

  • Visual design and art direction (color, composition, spatial consistency)

  • Motion graphics for video intro, achievements, and narrative elements

  • Facial expression animation system for the robot assistant

  • UX and UI design for the website and mobile application

  • Marketing renders and visual assets

  • Print design (hoodies, t-shirts, physical materials)

  • Lighting and visual detailing for selected interior space scenes

  • Ownership of visual and technical decisions, initiated and approved collaboratively

Technical Solution


  • Designed UI systems operating consistently across screen space and world space

  • Developed UI shaders enabling flexible visual ranking of elements via UV offsets

  • Built an automated Houdini system to generate a unified texture atlas from multiple screens with varying aspect ratios, allowing efficient reuse and shader-driven control

  • Used After Effects for:
    robot facial expression animation
    motion graphics
    video intro sequences
    rapid website prototyping

  • Created a procedural animation system for robot eye and eyelid movement to efficiently produce expressive emotional states

  • Ensured scientific plausibility and visual coherence across UI, environment elements, and web presentation


Tools


  • Unity

  • Houdini

  • After Effects

  • Photoshop

  • Illustrator

Result


  • Public release across multiple platforms

  • 1.5 million website page views

  • 325K+ app store downloads

  • 350K+ graphic novel copies distributed worldwide

  • Content read aboard the ISS by astronaut Frank Rubio (205 miles above Earth)

  • Award-winning educational project

  • High engagement and long-term reuse across app, web, and print formats

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