In The New Salsa Academy, you can take dancing lessons from renowned salsa instructors and practice with a cutting edge virtual partner.

Available on Meta Quest, Galaxy XR - Developed in Unity.

Role | 2023-Present | Systems & UX designer. Assisted in music composition.

Design Pillars

True to life salsa techniques and culture, providing beginners confidence to dance in real social events.

Precise feedback systems focused on positive reinforcement, improving the player's accuracy, timing and connection.

Solved Challenges

Encouraging growth

I designed systems to evaluate the player's dancing, analyzing head and hand tracking data with precise metrics to produce accurate scores, actionable feedback, and genuine praise.

Ground rules

I described space requirements to ensure a safe and consistent experience. Salsa dancing demands quick and wide movements, which can be tricky to accommodate in XR, not to mention dangerous.

Virtual lesson plan

To prevent "headset fatigue", I structured each lesson in quick modular phases in coordination with expert salsa dancers Rodrigo and Asya.

We planned all content and progression considering absolute beginners as well as people unfamiliar with XR environments or games in general, for both 'follow' and 'lead' roles.

Competitive rhythm game

I designed a Challenge mode where players can dance for high placements on leaderboards. It features an arcade-like scoring system, complete with multipliers and stylish feedback messages.

Guiding hands

I designed intuitive and modular help systems to suggest improvements to players while they dance, including a beat marker, instructive messages, and animated footprints.

UXtravaganza

In collaboration with Diego (an excellent graphic designer), I designed the base layouts, content, and navigation flows for all of the game's UI, including screens related to online features like downloadable content and leaderboards.