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Instagram for Apple Vision Pro

A concept redesign that reimagines Instagram as a spatial experience, where users can view photos, floating stories, and interact using natural hand gestures in an immersive 3D environment.

2 WeeksTimeline
Spatial UI DesignerMy Role
FigmaTool
Vision ProPlatform
Instagram Spatial UI for Apple Vision Pro
01 Overview

What is this project about?

This concept reimagines Instagram as a spatial experience. Users can view photos, floating stories, and interact using natural hand gestures. The goal was to make Instagram feel more immersive and social, easier to use in an immersive environment, and more intuitive than dragging a flat phone interface into 3D space.

Who it is for

Tech-savvy Gen Z and Millennials, casual users, content creators, and influencers who want to browse content without holding a phone.

Platform and scope

A spatial concept for Apple Vision Pro covering the home feed, story interactions, immersive full-screen scenes, profile views, and gesture-based navigation throughout.

My role

I was the sole designer responsible for research, persona development, journey mapping, wireframing, and the final spatial UI showcase in Figma.

02 Problem

The problem we set out to solve

Most spatial computing apps today are just flat phone or desktop interfaces pinned to a window in 3D space. That misses the point of the medium entirely. Social browsing on Vision Pro should use gestures instead of touch, take advantage of depth and immersive scenes, and let stories feel like they exist in the room rather than being trapped inside a rectangle.

03 Contribution

My Contribution

I built a target user persona, mapped a full journey across discovery, story viewing, and content creation, and sketched paper wireframes before moving into Figma. From there I designed a complete spatial UI showcase: notifications floating in space, gesture-based story interaction, immersive full-screen scenes, and a reimagined profile and explore page, all built around natural hand gestures instead of touch.

Key User Flow — Viewing an Immersive Story

Home Feed Floating notifications and posts
Pinch to Select Gesture selects a story bubble
Immersive Scene Story expands into the room
Engage Hand gesture to like or reply
Return to Feed Pinch out to collapse the scene
04 Visual Design

Screens and Visual Design

The visual direction leans on Instagram's signature gradient, orange through magenta into a deep blue-purple, applied as glowing accents against frosted glass panels that float in space. Light gray and icon-gray neutrals keep the UI calm so the gradient reads as intentional, not noisy, against immersive photo and video backgrounds.

Click any screen to view it full size.

Gradient Start
#F77737
Gradient Middle
#D6249F
Gradient End
#5B51D8
Main
#E1306C
Light Gray
#D9D9D9
Icon Gray
#8E8E8E
Display & Body SF Pro Display
Spatial Notifications and Home Feed
01 — Notifications, Home Feed & Chat List
User profile and friend suggestions
02 — User Profile and Friend Suggestions
Floating story bubbles
03 — Floating Stories
Full screen immersive reel
04 — Reels and Creator Profile
Chat screen
05 — Chat Screen
Spatial explore grid
06 — Explore Page
05 Decisions

Key Design Decisions

Designing for Vision Pro means designing for a body, not a screen. These are the calls that shaped how the final concept came together.

Interaction

Pinch and gaze instead of tap and scroll

Touch targets do not exist in spatial computing. Every interaction in this concept is built around eye-gaze-to-focus and pinch-to-select, the native input language of Vision Pro, rather than porting over tap gestures from the phone app.

Depth

Stories and notifications float at different depths

Flattening every element onto one plane wastes the one advantage spatial UI has over a phone screen. Notifications sit closer to the user, the main feed sits at a comfortable reading distance, and immersive scenes expand to fill the room when opened.

Immersion

Stories expand into full environments, not modals

Opening a story does not pop up a window, it transforms the room around the user into the scene from the story, whether that is a beach, a street, or a living room. This makes the content feel like a place rather than a clip.

Visual Identity

Gradient accents kept on UI chrome, not on photos

The signature orange-to-purple gradient is reserved for UI elements like buttons, rings, and notification glows, never overlaid on user photos or video. This keeps content the visual hero while still feeling unmistakably Instagram.

06 Learnings

What I Learned

Designing for spatial computing throws out a lot of assumptions that hold true for flat screens. Depth, gaze, and gesture all become design materials in their own right, and a familiar app like Instagram becomes a useful lens for figuring out how far that reinvention should go before it stops feeling familiar at all.

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