Trezi — Immersive Architecture Platform
Designing the UX for India's first VR-native architecture collaboration tool used by 600+ AEC firms
Trezi is India's first VR-native architecture platform, built on Unreal Engine. Architects upload a 3D model and walk through it in virtual reality — presenting to clients, collaborating across offices, or reviewing material selections at 1:1 scale. My challenge was designing UI that works in 3D space, for users who have never worn a VR headset.
Designing for 3D Space
Most UX knowledge lives in 2D. Spatial computing changes nearly everything: there's no cursor, no scrollbar, no back button. Menus that 'follow' the user feel nauseating. Text at the wrong distance is unreadable. My first three weeks were spent in the headset, systematically breaking every assumption I had brought in from web and mobile design.
World-Locked vs. Head-Locked UI
Trezi's core controls are world-locked (attached to points in the room) not head-locked (floating in your field of view). This prevents the disorienting sense that your UI is 'chasing' you and lets spatial memory form.
Gaze-Based Affordances
Hoverable elements highlight when the user's gaze rests on them for 400ms — no controller required. This made the tool accessible for clients who had never used a game controller.
Material Swap Panel
A real-time material browser lets stakeholders change finishes (flooring, paint, cladding) inside the VR walkthrough. The panel uses a card grid with haptic-previewed texture samples — reducing physical sample meeting time by an average of 3 sessions per project.
In-Space Annotation
Users can drop a virtual pin anywhere in the 3D model with a voice or typed note. Pins export as a structured PDF report for the design team — bridging VR review and the existing BIM workflow.
The Onboarding Problem
VR onboarding is uniquely hard: you can't read instructions on-screen while wearing a headset, and most architecture clients are not gamers. We designed a 'spatial tutorial' — a purpose-built mini-environment where every core interaction is encountered exactly once, in context, before the user enters their first real model.
The first time I walked through my own building before it was built, and my client could see what I was seeing — I didn't need to sell VR anymore.
— Principal Architect, HCP Design
Design System for VR
We built a Trezi spatial design system in Unreal Engine's UMG framework — a set of panel templates, button sizes (minimum 4cm × 4cm for reliable controller targeting), colour contrast rules for HDR displays, and motion guidelines (no rotation-based transitions, maximum 0.3s UI animation speed) that prevent motion sickness.
Research & Immersion
20 architecture firm visits, 4 weeks in-headset design sprints, VR sickness protocol testing.
Spatial Design System
Unreal UMG component library, world-lock / head-lock guidelines, gaze interaction patterns.
Private Beta
50 AEC firms, 8 weeks of moderated sessions. Iterated on onboarding, material panel, and annotation system.
Public Launch
Trezi 3.0 launch at the AEC India Summit. Featured in Architectural Digest India and Dezeen.
