Neha Mayacharya

Turtle Bay Resort · WebAR portal

A door onto the beach at Turtle Bay

Place a door in any room, step through, and you’re on the resort’s private beach at sunrise, with sea turtles, spatial sound and a picnic waiting. No app to install.

XR Designer · CXR Agency (Kinemeric)

Experience design, UX, sound, 3D quality and testing · 3–4 weeks

Step through

  • ROLE

    Experience design, UX, sound, 3D quality

  • CLIENT

    Turtle Bay Resort, Oʻahu

  • PLATFORM

    WebAR on 8th Wall, mobile browsers

  • TEAM

    Me, CD, PM, 2 3D artists, 2–3 devs

The brief

Show the beach, don’t describe it

Turtle Bay wanted people to feel its private beach before they’d ever booked.

Two audiences

Visitors walking past a conference booth, and anyone tapping a social or web ad.

One minute, any room

On their own phone, wherever they stood. It had to open reliably in a browser and hold up at human scale.

Turtles, done right

The resort’s green sea turtles were the heart of the scene. A turtle that moves wrong breaks the spell fastest.

How a visit unfolds

The only thing you tap is something that belongs on a beach

  1. The Turtle Bay loading screen: logo, “North Shore, Oʻahu” and the word “Loading”

    1Arrive

    A branded loader, timed so the wait feels like the resort

  2. A speaker icon asking you to turn up your volume, over a live camera view of a hotel room

    2Turn up the sound

    Asked before the camera opens. Half of this is the sea

  3. A scan reticle over a hotel floor, asking for a flat, well-lit surface

    3Find the floor

    Scan a flat, well-lit surface for the door

  4. Through the portal: a turtle on the sand beside a picnic blanket and a glowing shell, at sunrise

    4Step through

    Tap the door and walk in. Spatial audio fades up

  5. A sea turtle following a glowing shell across the sand

    5Follow the shells

    Glowing shells wake the turtles

  6. An invitation card reading “Now Experience the Magic in Real Life!” above a Learn More button

    6Plan the visit

    “Learn more” hands off to the resort’s site

Testing on device

Making the illusion hold

I tested every build on a phone, recorded what broke, and annotated it for the 3D artists and developers.

Scale and presence

The world had to sit at human height, at the door and on the move.

The beach at the door threshold, with the real hotel floor still visible at the bottom of the frame
Portal height

Where the threshold meets the real floor

The picnic seen from standing height: a parasol, a laid table and cushions on a blanket
Ground from standing height

The picnic reads at human scale

The beach mid-walk, eye level held on the picnic and a turtle crossing the sand
Holding height while walking

Eye height stays right mid-walk

A thatched parasol filling the frame and blocking the sea
Blocking the view

Props frame the sea, not hide it

World integrity

Anything that flickers, floats or flattens reads as fake.

Moving with the camera
Flat surface
Lighting glitch
A sea turtle on the beach with a red circle annotating a patch of foliage where the lighting fails
Highlighted patches
Signage texture

Sound and waiting

The first seconds decide whether someone stays.

Before · original volume
After · volume up 10%

So the sea carries on a phone speaker

Loading screen time

Timed against a real phone connection

Iteration

Three builds, one week

Each round went on device, got recorded end to end, and came back as notes for the next build.

The Turtle Bay entrance signage and palms at sunset, with no onboarding or invitation

BUILD 1

12 July

First full walk-through: beach, turtles, signage and picnic. No onboarding or invitation yet.

The surface-scan step, with guidance to find a flat, well-lit space

BUILD 2

18 July

Onboarding added: sound prompt, camera permission, surface-scan guidance, and the invitation card.

The resort’s own website on a phone, with Call and Book Now actions

BUILD 3

19 July

The complete loop: door, beach, shell, invitation, and a clean handoff to the resort’s site.

Craft

What makes a portal feel like a place

Spatial sound

The waves sit where the water is, so turning around changes the mix. I designed the soundscape and tuned levels on device, because what sounds right at a desk disappears on a phone speaker at a booth.

3D direction

I managed the assets from our two 3D artists and reviewed quality: the turtle’s crawl, the sunrise light, and how much detail a phone browser could carry before loading suffered. Every prop had to earn its polygons.

The finished experience

It showed the resort instead of selling it

From a hotel lobby, a conference hall or a living room, anyone with a phone could stand on the beach, meet the turtles, and choose to find out more.

Three Turtle Bay screens side by side: the welcome screen, a turtle on the beach, and the invitation to visit
Welcome screen, a turtle on the beach, and the invitation to visit
Full walkthrough, recorded on a phone

My role

The idea was a door. The work was making sure nobody noticed the seams.

AR experience design & ideation

UX, onboarding & the in-world interaction model

3D asset management & quality review

Sound design

Testing & validation on device

Coordination across 3D, dev, creative direction & PM

Client work for Turtle Bay Resort, delivered at CXR Agency (Kinemeric). I was the only XR designer, working with two 3D artists, a Creative Director, a project manager and 2–3 developers. This page shows my role and contributions.

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