Schuco Virtual Showroom

Schuco Virtual Showroom is a virtual reality experience helping clients to try Schuco products anytime and anywhere. User can interact with Schuco products in real time and learn how to operate them by practicing in the VR app. Furthermore, the application enables the user to visualize how a facade will look like with different Schuco module. It is an extremely powerful tool for architects and building developers.

Identify Target audience

My teammates and I started building this app from asking one question — “Who would benefit from using Schuco Virtual Showroom?”. Since Schuco collaborates with people from so many different industries, we need to identify our target audience, discover their needs, and learn how they behave. We validated these assumptions on an on-going basis.

Below are the 6 kinds of different target audience that will find Schuco Virtual Showroom very helpful:

• Fabricator

• Schuco employee

• Architect

• Building developer

• Subcontractor

• Homeowner

Survey

We wanted to know each type of user's needs. We were hoping to find something in common. The participants answered 12 questions. The first 4 questions are generic questions about the experience. The rest of them are designed differently based on their occupation.

Proto-Personas

Based on the survey, we found some similarities between these target customers. We found out that these target audiences fall into three different categories: The Learner, The Creator, and The Viewer.

Design from scratch

I did some sketches to brainstorm some idea for the needed features and workflow.

Looking for a good UX design workflow for VR

We tried some different approaches to make our vision more concise and clear. We found the following methods are very effective to quickly know if the design works well. It is also good for team communication.

• Create a storyboard.

• Make a short and simple animation to simulate user workflow in VR.

• Create a low-fi VR prototype.

Usability Testing

I conducted usability testing by inviting people to try it. Most of the testers are working in the Engineering industry who have never tried VR before. Based on the testing result, the testers are not sure about where to go because the 3D space is too open, the instruction is not clear enough so they sometimes were unsure on how to proceed with a function, and the testers didn’t notice the instruction we give them.

Iteration

• Environment

In order to guide the users to where we want them to go, I designed a single path environment. Although the environment is seemingly open, but it’s blocked by a way or some assets, so users can only on to the designated path.

• Controllers

I added a “label mode” to the project. If the user turn it on, the labels will appear on the controllers and show each button’s function.

• Moving indicator

Some testers can’t find the instruction. So I made moving indicator to grab their attention and show them how to interact with that object.

Final Result