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PridePay VR
PridePay VR is a short-form virtual reality exhibition exploring the past, present, and future of banking. Commissioned by Cardaq for a London PAY360 Exhibition, the experience uses immersive storytelling to communicate emerging ideas in financial technology.
My contributions to PridePay VR
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Designed and implemented a clear, intuitive UI to support navigation and audience engagement.
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Implemented responsive user feedback to reinforce interaction and understanding.
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Designed and implemented animated interface elements to enhance clarity and visual appeal.
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Created and iterated on lighting to establish the desired tone and atmosphere.
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Optimised the Meta Quest experience, ensuring stable performance and usability.
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Collaborated closely with clients to translate their vision into a cohesive interactive experience.
Design Intentions
PridePay VR is a short, immersive VR experience designed to introduce audiences to the history of money before exploring speculative ideas about the future of banking. Set within a futuristic environment, the experience uses immersive storytelling to communicate complex financial concepts in an accessible and engaging way.
The project was created for public display at Pay360 in London, which shaped many of the core design decisions. As the experience needed to accommodate a steady flow of first-time VR users, clarity, accessibility, and ease of use were prioritised throughout. The experience was designed to be easily reset between sessions, ensuring smooth handovers between users in a busy exhibition setting.
From the outset, Meta Quest 3 was chosen as the target platform due to its portability and suitability for event-based deployment. This informed performance, interaction, and interface decisions, ensuring the experience ran smoothly on standalone hardware while remaining visually engaging.
Challenges & Solutions
Scope and Time Constraints
PridePay VR was developed within a two-week timeframe, which required careful management of scope from the outset. To ensure the experience could be delivered to a high standard, we made deliberate decisions to focus on a small number of clearly defined interactions rather than attempting to cover too much content. This allowed us to prioritise clarity, polish, and stability, ensuring the experience felt complete and cohesive despite the limited development window.
Input and Accessibility
As the experience was designed for a public exhibition with a high turnover of first-time VR users, minimising confusion was essential. To reduce onboarding friction, we chose to implement hand tracking rather than traditional controllers. This allowed users to interact more intuitively with the experience, removing the need to explain button layouts or controller orientation.
Rapid Reset for Public Use
Given the exhibition setting, the experience needed to be easily and quickly reset between participants. To support this, we implemented an automatic restart when the headset was removed. This ensured each new user began from a consistent starting point, allowing staff to transition smoothly between participants without manual intervention.
Reflection
PridePay VR was a particularly meaningful project for me, as it was my first freelance commission and was delivered under a very tight deadline. Working within such a short timeframe pushed me to make confident design decisions, manage scope carefully, and focus on delivering a polished experience that worked reliably in a public setting.
I found it especially rewarding to explore how an industry I had never previously associated with virtual reality could be communicated through immersive technology. Translating concepts from the world of finance into an engaging, accessible VR experience challenged many of my assumptions about where VR can be effective.
The project gave me the opportunity to push myself creatively, particularly in the areas of user experience design and interface animation. I was very happy with what I was able to achieve within the constraints, and the experience reinforced the importance of clarity and restraint when designing for first-time VR users.
If I were to revisit the project, there is little I would fundamentally change. Given more time, I would focus on expanding the experience to feel more complete, rather than altering the core design decisions that shaped the final outcome.
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