Beyond Bricks

Beyond Bricks is an augmented-reality concept exploring how digital interaction can support building, extend play and give completed creations a life beyond the physical set.

This immersive application merges the tangible world of physical Lego bricks with the limitless possibilities of digital augmentation, offering a truly immersive and educational play experience.

Beyond Bricks is an augmented-reality concept exploring how digital interaction can support building, extend play and give completed creations a life beyond the physical set.

This immersive application merges the tangible world of physical Lego bricks with the limitless possibilities of digital augmentation, offering a truly immersive and educational play experience.

Role :

UI/UX Designer

Duration :

3 Months

Industry :

Toy & Gaming

Augmented Reality

View Walkthrough

Opportunity :

LEGO already does one thing exceptionally well: it makes building physical and tangible.

The opportunity wasn't to replace that experience with technology.

It was to explore where digital interaction could make the existing experience more useful, engaging and continuous.

The question :

LEGO already does one thing exceptionally well: it makes building physical and tangible.

The opportunity wasn't to replace that experience with technology.

It was to explore where digital interaction could make the existing experience more useful, engaging and continuous.

The question :

How might digital experiences bridge the gap between building a LEGO set and everything that happens before, during and after the build?

This became the foundation for Beyond Bricks, an AR-enabled concept combining guided building, digital collections, challenges, rewards and community interaction.

What I needed to understand :

Before defining features, I wanted to understand where the existing LEGO experience created friction and where digital interaction could genuinely add value.

I approached this through:

Quantitative research
Survey of LEGO enthusiasts

Before defining features, I wanted to understand where the existing LEGO experience created friction and where digital interaction could genuinely add value.

I approached this through:

Quantitative research
Survey of LEGO enthusiasts

Qualitative research
6 semi-structured interviews were conducted, incorporating both predetermined and open-ended questions to delve deeper into specific themes. These interviews were categorized into User Interviews and Expert Interviews (individuals with over 15 years of LEGO building experience) based on their expertise. The set of questions differed slightly for the experts to accommodate their level of experience.

Synthesis

After summarizing the interviews, the key points were referenced based on the insights and then organised into various categories depending specific codes. These specific codes were then organised in the form of affinity diagram to identify patterns, insights, and priorities,leading to more effective problem-solving, decision-making, and planning.

A total of 8 Categories were created based on Expectations, Pain points, Experiences, User engagement, creativity, Satisfaction, inspiration, and similar apps that the users mentioned about during their interviews and almost 130 notes were created after dividing these categories

Market context

The competitors were divided into two categories: Direct Competitors (Play and Entertainment Companies) and Indirect Competitors (Augmented reality games and apps). This analysis was conducted based on the reviews from platforms like Trustpilot, play store and app store. Some businesses, like Niantic and Bandai Namco, concentrated on offering products for age groups other than children whereas most of the competitors exclusively had children as their primary target audience. Additionally, as a building block for learning that might assist in framing some features for this application, some prospective feature suggestions were also obtained based on this analysis

What was discovered

63.3% of respondents were highly likely to recommend an AR-based LEGO application.

That established interest in the concept.

The interviews helped explain why.

Across six interviews, participants highlighted two recurring needs:

63.3% of respondents were highly likely to recommend an AR-based LEGO application.

That established interest in the concept.

The interviews helped explain why.

Across six interviews, participants highlighted two recurring needs:

Complex builds could benefit from additional guidance.

Completed LEGO sets could have value beyond the physical model.

Three opportunity areas emerged

When the research was synthesised, the opportunity became broader than simply "add AR."

Support the build

Complex LEGO builds could benefit from more contextual guidance.

Extend the life of a creation

Completed builds could become digital experiences users can revisit.

Create reasons to return

Challenges, rewards and social interaction could keep users engaged.

These became the three areas that shaped the product.

From insights to product direction

The next challenge was deciding which ideas were worth pursuing.

The research generated a wide range of possibilities, so I used the existing How Might We statements and NUF prioritisation exercise to narrow the opportunity space.

The next challenge was deciding which ideas were worth pursuing.

The research generated a wide range of possibilities, so I used the existing How Might We statements and NUF prioritisation exercise to narrow the opportunity space.

What made the cut?

Ideas were evaluated against:

Newness
Does the idea create something meaningfully different?

Usefulness
Does it address a real opportunity identified in research?

Feasibility
Could the concept realistically be implemented?

The NUF exercise helped turn a broad set of possibilities into a more focused feature set.

Ideas were evaluated against:

Newness
Does the idea create something meaningfully different?

Usefulness
Does it address a real opportunity identified in research?

Feasibility
Could the concept realistically be implemented?

The NUF exercise helped turn a broad set of possibilities into a more focused feature set.

The resulting direction

The product would bring together:

Build Support

Help when users need it.

Digital Collection

Give Completed creations a persistent digital experience.

Challenges & rewards

Create reasons to return

Community

Give Builders a place to share their creations.

I explored where immersive technology could add value to the opportunities identified through research.

This led to two applications:

AR Instruction Guide : Contextual support during complex builds.

AR/VR Collection : A way to experience completed creations digitally.

The technology became a means to solve identified opportunities

Turning the concept into a usable structure

Once the feature direction was established, the next challenge was organising everything into a product that users could navigate easily.

Low-fidelity testing became the first reality check.

The initial prototype was tested with two participants.

Users wanted more context around the Virtual Gallery.

Community needed better filtering.

The Rewards Store was seen as a useful way to represent progress.

Users wanted clearer feedback after completing challenges.

These findings didn't just refine individual screens.

They affected how the product needed to be structured.

From feedback to information architecture

To understand how the growing feature set should be organised, I used card sorting to explore how users expected content and functionality to be grouped.

The results were translated into a sitemap defining the product hierarchy and navigation.

The outcome

The information architecture established a clearer relationship and gave the high-fidelity design a structure to build on.

From structure to high fidelity

With the core architecture established, I translated the experience into a high-fidelity mobile product.

The prototype became the next research tool

The high-fidelity prototype was tested through four interviews across two rounds, allowing the design to be iterated between sessions. Heuristic evaluation was also used to prioritise usability issues by severity.