Lil Goober

The hackathon

A friend and I entered Meta's hackathon in June–July 2024 with a Quest 3 build. The idea was simple and weird: a pet that lives in your room, but one you could also transfer into, seeing your home through the eyes of an imaginative, curious creature.

The pet got a name. Lil Goober. The name stuck. The character stuck. The prompt was supposed to be "win a hackathon"; it ended up being "find out who lives here."

What we built

A spatial pet that exists in your room with you, with all the small dumb behaviors: wandering, getting bored, demanding snacks, looking at things you didn't ask it to look at. Closer to a feline than a chatbot. The XR part of the work was less about technology and more about body language in 3D space. What reads as "happy," "skeptical," "definitely about to knock something over."

Why it kept going

Lil Goober didn't really stop after the hackathon. It became my recurring character, an ongoing study in what spatial companionship actually feels like when you take it past the demo. Every time someone wears the headset for the first time, the right test of presence is "do you feel watched?" Goober is the answer to that question.

Role and stack

UI & UX Designer, 3D artist. Figma, Procreate, Blender, Photoshop, Unity, Unity Timeline. Two-person team.

Where it's going

I'm still building Goober. Each new headset gets a new Goober behavior. Recently a Vision Pro pass that experiments with persistent room scanning so Goober remembers where the couch is between sessions. The character keeps teaching me things about what spatial companions should and shouldn't do.