We were early adopters — almost nobody had designed for mixed reality before, so conventions had to be invented from scratch. Three things made this uniquely hard:

No established patterns — MR is not VR. We couldn't copy from anywhere. Every interaction had to be designed from first principles.

Hardware constraints — Magic Leap is a small device with limited processing power. Every 3D element had to be optimized and balanced to run smoothly.

Testing in 3D without 3D — Standard user testing doesn't work when your canvas is physical space. We ran sessions where we asked users to imagine "this square is a tennis court" to validate spatial decisions before building them.

As a product designer coming from web and mobile, I had to learn mixed reality on the fly. One of the most creatively challenging — and rewarding — things I've ever worked on.