Apple · Concept · Not released

It can dim the room.

Which is the whole difference. A headset owns the ground behind the interface; everything after this one gives it back.

The axis

Three displays

Wrist

Bezel · shipped 2023

Headset

Distance · concept

Glasses

Size · projected

What holds

—

One judgment

Unpleasant to pleasant

—

One gesture

A second to log

—

Eight degrees

Angular size, held

Role

Sr. DesignerHuman Interface Guidelines

Mindfulness crossed to visionOS at the Vision Pro launch. The axis did not. A headset has no bezel, so the axis moves to the one the medium already has.

Client

Apple

Company

MarcomCurious Space®

Surfaces

Apple Vision ProHealth · glasses, as a direction

Year

2023

RESEARCH · CONCEPT · NOT SHIPPED BY APPLE

Push and Pull

State of Mind has one gesture on a continuous axis. A headset has no bezel to slide along — so the axis becomes the one the medium already has. Unpleasant is near. Pleasant is far.

APPLE VISION PRO · BODY, GLASS LAMINATE, FRAMES, SENSOR ARRAY · VERTICAL AXIS AT x=462 — EVERY SENSOR PAIR MIRRORS ACROSS IT

RESEARCH · PUSH AND PULL · CONCEPT

Neutral

1.30 m

8° CONSTANT

PULL IT NEAR · PUSH IT AWAY

SNAP0.55

DISPLAY

PANEL FIXED AT 1.00 m

THE INVERSION

Distance becomes the axis

On a wrist there is a slider because there is a bezel to slide along. In a headset there is no bezel, and floating the slider in front of you turns a one-second gesture into aiming at a menu. So the axis becomes the one axis the medium already has.

Unpleasant is near. Pleasant is far. Where the form ends up is the entry.

SEVEN STOPS · LOGARITHMIC · 0.55 m → 3.10 m · DASHED LINES = THE CONSTANT 8° CONE

WHAT YOU SEE

Same size. Only depth changed.

The form holds eight degrees of visual angle wherever it sits, so scale carries nothing. Depth is read from shadow weight, contrast, saturation, focus, and occlusion against the panel — which is pinned at one meter and never moves.

VERY UNPLEASANT OCCLUDES THE PANEL · VERY PLEASANT SITS BEHIND IT

THE TURN

Distance is a binocular idea

It leans on vergence, on occlusion, and on a display that can hold a convincing near plane. A passthrough headset has all three. A pair of glasses may have none — narrow field of view, a display that can only add light, and in some form factors one eye rather than two.

CUE	HEADSET	GLASSES
Vergence / true depth	Primary	Unavailable or weak
Occlusion against the panel	Primary	Unavailable — additive display cannot subtract
Shadow weight	Supporting	Becomes primary
Contrast and saturation falloff	Supporting	Becomes primary
Size in view	Held constant	Released — size carries the axis

The axis is invariant. The encoding is negotiable per display.

A CONCEPT · APPLE NEVER SHIPPED STATE OF MIND ON VISION PRO · THE SEVEN STOPS, THE RAMP AND THE DERIVED FORM ARE THE SHIPPED WORK

Where it points next

A headset owns what the wearer sees. It can dim the room, hold a convincing near plane, and let a form sit in front of a panel. A pair of glasses would borrow the view instead: an additive display adds light and cannot take any away, so nothing occludes anything, and the ground behind the interface is whatever the wearer happens to be walking past. The axis does not need any of that — but the cues that carry it would have to be re-chosen, and this is where they would land.

CUE	HEADSET	GLASSES · PROJECTED
Vergence	Primary. True depth is available.	Weak or absent.
Occlusion	Primary. The form can sit in front of the panel.	Unavailable. An additive display cannot subtract.
Shadow weight	Supporting.	Becomes primary.
Contrast falloff	Supporting.	Becomes primary.
Size in view	Held constant at eight degrees.	Released. Size carries the axis.

The outcome

The axis is invariant. The encoding is negotiable per display. Unpleasant stays near and pleasant stays far on any hardware that can hold a near plane; where it cannot, the same judgment is carried by whatever cues remain, and the gesture does not change.

References

What shipped: Mindfulness on visionOS, and the State of Mind axis on the wrist — seven stops, the ramp, the derived form. What did not: this spatial treatment of the axis. The projection toward glasses is reasoning, not a product.

[1]

Human Interface Guidelines — spatial layout, depth and immersive experiences

Apple

[2]

State of Mind — the shipped axis, seven stops on a continuous scale

Apple

Related Work

State of Mind

Lumasis