Display Evo

The dock put each new app in the middle and moved existing windows to the sides. A fourth launch could minimize an existing window. People had to find their work again and repair the layout.

Rearranging windows in space also takes physical movement and reach, so switching and resuming work mattered as much as visible space.

We reframed placement, launching, depth, and recovery as one system.

Meta VR glasses broadened the brief early on. A lighter, more familiar form factor meant everyday use, not just sessions at home, with entertainment leading on “big screens anywhere.”

We started with how people should feel: focused, comfortable, and in control. The purple explorations pictured everyday activities like watching, switching tasks, and moving between spaces before we worked through specific features and implementations.

We wanted a system that was adaptive, seamless, resilient, and empowering, designed at human scale and guided by user intent.

We explored how much the system should organize and how much people should control: freeform windows or managed layouts, a single focused task or multiple windows, and content that follows the person or stays in the room.

We defined a desktop that travels with the person and windows anchored to the room. New apps launch in front of the person without reflowing the rest of the workspace; room anchors keep their scale and placement.

Launching while looking at an existing window creates a Z-Stack. The new window inherits the position and depth of the window you are looking at, including one you deliberately repositioned.

Selecting a visible window’s chrome brings it forward while the rest of the stack keeps its relative order. This gives people a direct way to switch between applications within a limited field of view.

People could choose their working depth. Keeping the active window at a consistent depth aimed to reduce vergence changes as they switched between windows.

Launch Assist combines Z-Stacks, adjacent snapping, and a temporary push in depth to resolve overlapping windows.

When a new window would intersect multiple existing windows, the system pushes them farther back. Moving or closing the new window lets the displaced windows return to their original positions.

A deliberate move changes that behavior: moving one of the pushed windows commits the new arrangement. If another launch triggers a second push, the first arrangement is no longer restored.

A window launching beside an existing one snaps into alignment with it, giving the workspace a clear starting arrangement.

People can drag and release windows into a snapped position, including above or below another window, then pull them free for smaller adjustments.

I designed and built the Window Manager web prototype to find, restore, and organize windows. I partnered with engineering on its VR Shell implementation.

Gaze targets needed to grow, but a larger panel would take up more of a constrained field of view. I worked with the input and interaction team on window ergonomics to resolve the tension.

We coordinated content scale and logical container size so targets could grow while the panel’s physical size stayed constant.

Matthew and I built the tools we used to make spatial decisions: a parametric Cinema 4D rig where panel size, distance, pixels per degree, and scale drive the resulting field of view, and interactive prototypes that place real app panels in a rendered room.

These became interactive specifications for components, spatial layout, and task management that design, input, and engineering reviewed together. I also worked with performance and engineering on dynamic resource allocation so people could run more than three apps at once.