Experience JMU grew out of JMU's X-Labs, an interdisciplinary innovation space where design students, computer science students, IT engineers, and other majors worked side-by-side on real projects for real clients. The course had spent a semester exploring what the Unity engine could do in AR and VR — and this was the capstone: take everything learned and ship something real, for a real client, in a real space.

In 2018, that meant working on genuinely uncharted ground. The problems we had to solve had rarely been attempted before — and the most fundamental one was accessibility. Most visitors walking into that lobby had never worn a VR headset. We needed an experience anyone could pick up, instantly, without staff to guide them and without instructions to read first. Our solution was hand navigation: a Leap Motion sensor mounted to the Rift, and a tutorial that taught you how to move through the space as you entered it. No controller. No learning curve. Just your hands.