Living Cities 2022–2024

Reflektor

I led design as Living Cities evolved from a live digital twin into a platform that turned room scans into multiplayer games.

Washington Square Park Live digital twin

The starting point

Washington Square Park became one shared space for local and remote players

Living Cities began with a centimeter-accurate digital twin of Washington Square Park, complete with dynamic daylight and detailed geometry.

People in the park used their phone's camera and location to anchor themselves, then appeared as avatars inside the digital twin. Photos and live video surfaced where they were captured, giving remote players a live window into the physical park.

The experience was technically ambitious and often magical, but it did not create a repeatable reason to return. We treated it as a proof of concept and began looking for a product model that could scale.

My role As Head of Design, I co-led product direction, prototyping, and experience design with a small cross-functional team.

The story

The technology worked
A single physical location does not scale

The digital twin of Washington Square Park at night, including the illuminated arch and surrounding city — Washington Square Park Dynamic digital twin at night

01 / Shared place

Make physical and virtual presence feel equally real

Reflektor connected people in Washington Square Park with people joining its digital twin from anywhere in the world. Visitors in the park appeared at their exact location as gold avatars, making physical presence immediately legible to remote players.

Photos and livestreams surfaced at the same coordinates where they were captured, so media became part of the shared place rather than a separate feed. The design challenge was to help both sides understand who was present, where they were, and what was happening across the physical and virtual park.

Local meets remote The gold avatar is physically in the park

A photo captured in Washington Square Park appearing at its matching location inside the digital twin — Spatial media A real photo appears where it was taken

Scan to play RoomPlan prototype

02 / The pivot

Turn any room into a multiplayer space

Room-scanning tools like Apple’s RoomPlan opened a new path. We could turn the places people already knew into games. A bedroom could become a scavenger hunt. A coffee shop could host a game of the floor is lava. In our first prototype, miniature avatars raced through a founder’s living room while a remote player chased them in a UFO.

The product became clear. Scan a real place and make it playable in seconds.

Concept art of players using a scanned home as a shared multiplayer game space — Scan and play Product vision

03 / Gameplay

Make personal spaces worth playing and sharing

We expanded the prototypes to include mini-games, connected rooms, and contests. People could build larger experiences from their own spaces, then invite others in to play.

A remote player pilots a UFO while a miniature player runs through a scanned living room — Room-scale UFO First playable prototype

Outcomes & learning

A room scan became a multiplayer game in seconds

Decision

We stopped hand-building a single destination and focused the product on scanning almost any room and making it playable.

Outcome

Although Living Cities ended before full launch, the final prototypes moved from room scan to multiplayer play in seconds and supported dozens of people in the same space.

Learning

The park proved the technology, but gave people little reason to return. Personal spaces were familiar, varied, and already full of stories worth sharing.