Architectural showrooms in VR

Designed immersive VR experiences for architectural visualization—helping clients explore and evaluate spaces before they were built.

Background

Buying new properties often happens before the construction is finished, and the prospective buyers have a hard time understanding the dimensions of the space based on 2D images. Virtual reality allows the buyers visit properties even years before the completion of the project.

I was leading design for VR architectural visualizations for some of the largest construction companies and office providers in Finland. The experiences were used to visualize some of the most well-known building projects in Helsinki.

Role

UX design
UI design
UI development
Scene building
3D art

Tools

Unity
AdobeXD
Blender
VR Headsets

Team

Unity engineer
3D artist
Project manager

Stakeholders

Project manager / CSM
Other co-founders of the studio

Key challenges

Fast pickup for unseen technology

The onboarding time had to be instant in showroom situations - for a technology people had never used before.

Limited set of controls

Due to the quick onboarding, the whole application needed to work with simple controls - most of the time, we were using only one button.

Short experience time

The time of the visitor in the applications was sometimes very short (1-3 min) - how to design an experience for such a short time?

Artefacts

Apartment selector for Kalasatama Redi visualization

In Redi visualization, the users were able to visit both apartments and the lobby of the apartment complex.

Theme selector

Inside of the apartments, the potential buyers were able to switch colors and materials for e.g. accent walls based on ready-made themes.

Moving between areas

Move between areas by pointing and clicking digital floating signage. Signage created a linear tour that the user would follow during the experience.

Experiences delivered to the clients

The experiences were running on PC + VR headset that were delivered and setup for the clients. This was before standalone headsets had been released to the market.

Learn more

More information available upon request.