Nano
Biology is full of processes that are invisible, microscopic, and hard to care about. Memorizing them doesn't work. But what if you could do them? Nano started with a simple thesis: students learn better when their bodies are involved. Physically moving, reaching, throwing, pulling is more memorable than clicking through a diagram. My job as Creative Director at Lighthaus was to build an experience that helped us prove this to be true.
Client
Lighthaus Inc
Service
Creative Director
Year
2023
We set out to teach protein synthesis in VR. The first question I had to answer was what will the students actually be doing with their hands? I knew I didn't want them to passively watch things happen or listen to long explanations of processes. Actually, the less description the better. I wanted to treat this like a proper game, where the focus is on the actions you take. You learn by doing. You get immersed in the world and you care about doing things well.
The genetic code menu is the clearest example of my design philosophy at work. Early versions used screen-based menus. They worked, technically. But in VR, a floating screen is a concession. I knew we could do better. In Nano, selecting a protein means reaching toward the nucleus and using a gesture-based interface to pull an mRNA strand through its pore with your hand. You see it leave, you carry it to the ribosome, you feel the haptic feedback as it locks in. Pull, carry, deposit is the actual process students need to learn: mRNA leaves the nucleus and travels to the ribosome, the first step in protein synthesis.
Nano launched on Meta Quest as a single-player game on the app store in 2023 with a 4.9★ rating and Meta's Best App of the Year award. The experience launched as a multiplayer game in classrooms nationwide, notably being added to the required curriculum for all high school students in Dallas Public Schools. Half of the students are in headset, the other half are mission control via a web app. Students outside VR gave instructions, watching the progress in the cell, arguing about which protein to make next. For me, the moment I keep coming back to is listening to a student who had just taken their headset off standing next to a classmate who is stepping into the Nano cell for the first time. They're explaining what's about to happen, what the nucleus does, how to find the lysosome. The student was sharing something they understood well enough to teach and excited enough to want to. That's what embodied learning looks like when it works.
