Case Study
Design initiative drives creator sales and design craft.
Context
Spatial is a platform enabling creators & businesses to quickly build and share 3D digital spaces across web & mobile.
Description
Due to a steady growth in retention, Spatial is increasing its investment in creators building games on the platform. But two challenges persist: creator sales remain low, which dampens the incentive to keep building, and the product team lacks a deep understanding of creator workflows. The result is a creator base facing real obstacles without an empathetic design team behind them. To close that gap, I launched an initiative to deepen the design team's empathy for Unity creators, surface the barriers holding back creator sales, and raise the team's overall craft.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
Q4 '23 - Q1 '24
Company
Team
Designer(s)
Jayson Hahn
Jimmy Shan
Yoonwoo Lee
3
PDs
Stack
Figma
VSCode
Unity
Impact
4x Creator Sales
Case Study
Design initiative drives creator sales and design craft.
Context
Spatial is a platform enabling creators & businesses to quickly build and share 3D digital spaces across web & mobile.
Description
Due to a steady growth in retention, Spatial is increasing its investment in creators building games on the platform. But two challenges persist: creator sales remain low, which dampens the incentive to keep building, and the product team lacks a deep understanding of creator workflows. The result is a creator base facing real obstacles without an empathetic design team behind them. To close that gap, I launched an initiative to deepen the design team's empathy for Unity creators, surface the barriers holding back creator sales, and raise the team's overall craft.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
Q4 '23 - Q1 '24
Company
Team
Designer(s)
Jayson Hahn
Jimmy Shan
Yoonwoo Lee
3
PDs
Stack
Figma
VSCode
Unity
Impact
4x Creator Sales
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
COPYRIGHT JAYSon.STUDIO 2026
Pain Point
While retention has grown since the
Spatial Economy initiative, sales remain very low for most creators.
Pain Point
The team is not dogfooding the creation flow. The gap in empathy between creators and designers continues to widen.
Goal
Kickstart an initiative to pinpoint challenges hindering sales while deepening the design team’s empathy for our creators.
Information gathering
Audit
How do other platforms address these challenges, and how do their approaches differ from Spatial's?
Competitive Analysis
Fortnite Store Audit
Roblox Marketplace Audit
Recording of Spatial's current highest-performing shopping experience.
Fortnite Store Audit
Roblox Marketplace Audit
Recording of Spatial's current highest-performing shopping experience.
Fortnite Store Audit
Roblox Marketplace Audit
Recording of Spatial's current highest-performing shopping experience.
Fortnite Store Audit
Roblox Marketplace Audit
Recording of Spatial's current highest-performing shopping experience.
Insights
Roblox is a 2D shopping experience & sells only "global" items.
The marketplace sells only "global" items—usable across all experiences, not just one. It focuses on individual items, with secondary emphasis on how they relate to the avatar. The minimal background and fixed avatar navigation keep users focused on shopping rather than space discovery.
Fortnite only sells global items but hyper focuses on item bundles.
Similar to Roblox in structure and biasing toward highlighting items as well as only sells "global" items. Unlike Roblox, Fortnite is heavily biased towards item "bundles" rather than individual items.
Navigating Spatial's 3D shopping experience adds friction to sales.
Shopping experiences often require users to run from item to item in 3D space. While this provides a unique shopping experience - it is inefficient for rapid item discovery and quick sales conversion.
Development
Focused Direction
Increase sales by limiting space navigation and increasing focus on global item discovery.
Texturing, lighting, and game development all occurred within Unity game engine.
Revised architecture after initial grey box feedback.
Initial Greyboxing of the 3D space to better understand spacing, positioning, and Ui layout.
Animation created by Yoonwoo Lee to inform art direction and interactive design before production.
Texturing, lighting, and game development all occurred within Unity game engine.
Revised architecture after initial grey box feedback.
Initial Greyboxing of the 3D space to better understand spacing, positioning, and Ui layout.
Animation created by Yoonwoo Lee to inform art direction and interactive design before production.
Texturing, lighting, and game development all occurred within Unity game engine.
Revised architecture after initial grey box feedback.
Initial Greyboxing of the 3D space to better understand spacing, positioning, and Ui layout.
Animation created by Yoonwoo Lee to inform art direction and interactive design before production.
Texturing, lighting, and game development all occurred within Unity game engine.
Revised architecture after initial grey box feedback.
Initial Greyboxing of the 3D space to better understand spacing, positioning, and Ui layout.
Animation created by Yoonwoo Lee to inform art direction and interactive design before production.
Playtesting Feedback
90%
"What am I supposed to do when entering?"
Capture the user's attention by auto-prompting the store when entering the space.
70%
"These items are not worth the money."
Introduce tiered pricing to help users compare assets relative to each other vs comparing items relative to external assets.
50%
"I wish there were categories"
Introduced categories and bundles following POC deployment to production.
Proof of Concept
The initial concept built by the design team and pitched to the team at large.
Never. Stop. Creating.
Never. Stop. Creating.
Impact
Shipped
Implemented into
production
%
increased sales relative to the average space
2x
increased sales relative to other initiatives
Takeaways
There is a strong correlation between an item's value and its ability to be "shown off" to others.
Stakeholder buy-in increases as you emphasize the value the project brings to each stakeholder.
Even in a lead role, support is essential. Regular consultations with game developers and other PMs would have provided valuable insight into project timelines.