Ongoing User Experience Research

Apple Vision Pro's Persona

Apple's Persona is "a dynamic, natural representation of your face and hand movements that can be used while you’re wearing Apple Vision Pro. "

Apple's Persona, a real-time 3D avatar for immersive communication

Apple Vision Pro’s Persona feature, a real-time 3D avatar system for immersive video communication.

Overview

Apple's Persona is a real-time 3D avatar system that users can create on their Vision Pro. "Persona's can be utilized in FaceTime calls as well as other apps that use the Persona Virtual Camera. "

Problem statement

Improve the user experience of Vision Pro Personas by conducting user interviews and surveys to evaluate how well the avatars reflect each user’s unique facial features, skin tone, face shape, and expressions. Through this research understand where the Persona experience feels natural and where it falls short.

Key Challenges

  • Ensuring that Personas reflect the full spectrum of users—across different skin tones, facial structures, and features
  • Interpreting subjective feedback and transforming it into clear, actionable recommendations that product and engineering teams can implement.

My Role

Design and execute surveys, in-depth user interviews, observational studies and A/B testing, to assess performance and user satisfaction across diverse hardware environments and lighting conditions.

Research Methods

  • Survey Design & Analysis
  • User Studies & Interviews
  • A /B Testing
Workshop with community stakeholders focused on food and sustainability at Emerge Food Festival

An example of Apple's Persona being used to present on FaceTime on the Vision Pro.

Research Process

Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including hardware engineering, computer vision, and design to understand how accurately the system captures a user’s facial features, skin tone, expressions, and movement, and to identify usability issues in the Persona enrollment process.

Design and conduct in-depth user interviews, user studies,  A/B testing, and surveys to quantify user satisfaction and perceived accuracy.

  • Calibrate and troubleshoot Vision Pro hardware.
  • Ensuring participants are guided through the enrollment process smoothly and naturally

Support data analysis pipelines and help translate findings into actionable recommendations for refinement and product usability.

Contribute to ongoing improvements in research operations, including protocol documentation, testing setup efficiency, and multi-device study reliability.

Apple's Vision Pro Persona as seen at WWDC2025

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