ABOUT THE PROJECT
Teaching Healthy Eating Through Empathy and Immersive Play
The mini VR meals preparation game aims to influence nutritional habits and form a positive relationship with food. Targeting children players to learn about the correlation between nutrition and ingredients while suggesting dishes for users with different needs.
End-to-End UX Design
Game Concept & Strategy
Unity Prototyping
Year
Self-initiated
How I Get Started
Virtual reality offers a uniquely immersive and empathetic environment for learning. This mini-game is my experiment in using VR to make nutrition education more interactive, memorable, and fun.
My interest in healthy eating habits began with a simple realization: understanding what we eat and why can deeply influence our well-being. But traditional methods of teaching nutrition often feel rigid or dull, like studying for a test. I wanted to create an engaging alternative that encourages curiosity and builds a positive relationship with food, especially for kids.
Strategic Gameplay Concept
I chose cooking as the central theme because it’s one of the most personal and hands-on ways we interact with food. Cooking blends creativity, organization, and emotional expression. It can be playful, social, and even therapeutic. Whether preparing meals or sharing them, food is a powerful connector.
For this minimum viable prototype, I focused specifically on the dish-planning stage of cooking. Building an entire cooking simulation would be complex—and many great cooking games already exist. Instead, I explored how players could role-play as a chef, planning meals for others based on their needs. This allowed me to emphasize empathy, nutrition, and strategy without overcomplicating the game mechanics as a solo developer and designer. The game is developed by using Unity’s XR Interaction Toolkit including XR grab interactable, XR simple interactable and XR Socket interactor.
Game Experiences
From 2D to 3D: Evolving Interface Design for VR Through Real-World Intuition
During the design phase, I noticed I tended to approach interactions using 2D interface solutions. This was likely due to my product design background, where certain best practices had become automatic. However, I had to remind myself to create more intuitive experiences for VR, where users aren't limited to a flat screen.
The cookbook feature illustrates this evolution. I initially designed a traditional 2D interface with a back button, then progressed to three panels to better use the space. But I struggled to make discovery feel natural. While UI hints work well in 2D design, I wanted to fully embrace spatial design. By stepping back to consider real-world recipe browsing, I realized a cookbook was the perfect solution. People already know how to interact with books and understand their purpose. Discovering and browsing recipes through a virtual book feels more natural than triggering a 3D button to open an interface. Plus, in VR, I could blend this physical intuition with digital benefits by adding an information layer above each ingredient.
Credits
As a solo developer and designer, I'm grateful for the creative commons materials and purchasable assets that allowed me to focus on building the experience. Credits for the 3D models, illustrations, and portions of the scripts can be found here in my notes.
Special thanks to Unity expert and instructor Indika Wijesooriya for helping me tackle technical solutions and scripts.
Future Roadmap Notes
Experience: Add more micro-interactions to create a more realistic interactive experience.
Game mechanism: Implement multiplayer functionality to enhance social elements, allowing players to act as either chefs or customers. Increase gameplay complexity through progressive difficulty levels.
Customization: Develop a scalable framework that enables teachers to easily upload their own content.
Usability Testing: Optimize the game's stability to conduct proper user testing and gather meaningful feedback.
